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Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

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Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#101

Post by giancarlostoro »

I was expecting it to be a way of taking a URL and converting it to a base64 type of format that is stored on the "url" itself and decoded by a simple web page. I have wanted to try to do this for a while, but never saw down to look for an appropriate encoding that somehow also compresses.

I helped someone design a regular URL shortener in PHP before, they're not complicated to implement with a simple MySQL (or even SQLite) database and any language you're familiar with. I have not taken a stab at writing a client-side shortener yet on the other hand.

Edit: clarifying

Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#102

Post by hobby-coder-guy »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #101

I was expecting it to be a way of taking a URL and converting it to a base64 type of format that is stored on the "url" itself and decoded by a simple web page. I have wanted to try to do this for a while, but never saw down to look for an appropriate encoding that somehow also compresses. I helped someone design a regular URL shortener in PHP before, they're not complicated to implement with a simple MySQL (or even…

Why would you need a database for that?

Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#103

Post by josefresco »

I setup YOURLS* for a client several years back, worked quite well. Was always a little concerned about privacy/potential for abuse (being self-hosted) but we never had those issues due to the limited use & exposure.

*https://yourls.org

Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#105

Post by nelsontky »

xendop wrote: post #100

This is really cool. I think it might even be possible to improve it further so opening an issue isn't even needed. My thinking is you could store the links and the corresponding shortened URL lookups as an element in the HTML source itself. You would have a submit input on the page. User enters the url they'd like to shorten (or is pulled from a param). The JS reads that value and then looks it up to see if it alrea…

Hmm having a GitHub action redeploy the site is not instantaneous and it does take up to 1 minute for the site (and consequently the new short link) to be updated. Nevertheless, that is a sweet idea, and there are other replies that suggested using a static site generator to generate one html file per short link, with each html file containing a "redirect" tag in . This idea can definitely be combined with a GitHub action. Personally I feel that is overkill, because if I were doing something so elaborate, I would have opted for a simpler and more scalable option like Google Cloud Firestore or Firebase URLs

Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#106

Post by nelsontky »

bigbubba wrote: post #104

We have too many URL shorteners already. These things accelerate link rot.

Indeed and especially with many shorteners not being maintained and going down. That being said, this one is not meant to be an actual URL shortener, but rather, a cool hack and it is not meant to be used widely or used in production.

Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#107

Post by _eht »

josefresco wrote: post #103

I setup YOURLS* for a client several years back, worked quite well. Was always a little concerned about privacy/potential for abuse (being self-hosted) but we never had those issues due to the limited use & exposure. * https://yourls.org

I’ll second this. A fairly easy to use framework. Not too big that you couldn’t read the PHP or make adjustments as needed.

Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#108

Post by nelsontky »

josefresco wrote: post #103

I setup YOURLS* for a client several years back, worked quite well. Was always a little concerned about privacy/potential for abuse (being self-hosted) but we never had those issues due to the limited use & exposure. * https://yourls.org

I do have YOURLS on my personal domain/server. It does work well for me and has no spam as link creation can be made private!

Re: Show HN: I created a URL shortener that can be entirely hosted on GitHub Pages

#109

Post by bigbubba »

nelsontky wrote: post #106
bigbubba wrote: post #104

We have too many URL shorteners already. These things accelerate link rot.

Indeed and especially with many shorteners not being maintained and going down. That being said, this one is not meant to be an actual URL shortener, but rather, a cool hack and it is not meant to be used widely or used in production.

Fair enough, I'm all for neat hacks. Link shorteners in general make me concerned since I've encountered more than a few dead ones. It's frustrating to know that the content you're trying to access may very well still be alive, but the only links you have to it are dead because somebody got bored of running the shortener used.
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