YOURLS: Your Own URL Shortener

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About YOURLS

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What is YOURLS

YOURLS stands for Your Own URL Shortener. It is a small set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run your own URL shortening service (a la TinyURL or Bitly).

Running your own URL shortener is fun, geeky and useful: you own your data and don't depend on third-party services. It's also a great way to add branding to your short URLs, instead of using the same public URL shortener everyone uses.

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YOURLS Features

• Free and open-source software,
• Private (your links only) or Public (everybody can create short links, fine for an intranet),
• Terrific Plugin architecture and dozens of plugins to easily implement new features,
• Handy bookmarklets to easily shorten and share links,
• Awesome stats: historical click reports, referrers tracking, visitors geo-location,
• Developer API to integrate YOURLS into other applications,
• Friendly installer,
• Sample files to create your own public interface and more !

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Screenshots

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Download

Download YOURLS from GitHub and see see the Install guide

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Credits

YOURLS is made by awesome people.

Keep up to date: read the official YOURLS Blog.

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Fresh Install

1. Unzip the YOURLS archive
2. Copy user/config-sample.php to user/config.php
3. Open user/config.php with a raw text editor (like Notepad) and fill in the required settings
4. Upload the unzipped files to your domain public_html or www folder
5. Create a new database (see Configuration – you can also use an existing one)
6. Point your browser to http://your-own-domain-here.com/admin/

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Install Guides

The documentation on docs.yourls.org is full of important information. Regarding installation, you'll find help for Apache and Nginx.

You will also find numerous unofficial installation guides on Awesome YOURLS, a curated list of resources.

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Upgrade

1. Backup the database!
2. Unzip the YOURLS archive
3. Upload files to your server, overwriting your existing install (this won't affect user files such as config or plugins)
4. Point your browser to http://your-own-domain-here.com/admin/

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Configuration (in user/config.php)

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MySQL settings

• YOURLS_DB_USER
  your MySQL username
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_DB_USER', 'joe' );
• YOURLS_DB_PASS
  your MySQL password
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_DB_PASS', 'MySeCreTPaSsW0rd' );
• YOURLS_DB_NAME: The database name
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_DB_NAME', 'yourls' );
• YOURLS_DB_HOST
  The database host
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_DB_HOST', 'localhost' );
• YOURLS_DB_PREFIX
  The name prefix for all the tables YOURLS will need
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_DB_PREFIX', 'yourls_' );

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Site options

• YOURLS_SITE
  Your (hopefully short) domain URL, no trailing slash, lowercase. If you pick the non-www version of your domain, don't use the www version in your browser (and vice-versa)
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_SITE', 'https://your-own-domain-here.com' );
• YOURLS_PRIVATE
  Private means the admin area will be protected with login/pass as defined below. See Private or Public for more.
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_PRIVATE', true );
• YOURLS_UNIQUE_URLS
  Allow multiple short URLs for a same long URL
  Set to true to allow only one pair of shortURL/longURL (default YOURLS behavior), or to false to allow creation of multiple short URLs pointing to the same long URL (as bit.ly does)
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_UNIQUE_URLS', true );
• YOURLS_COOKIEKEY
  A random secret hash used to encrypt cookies. You don't have to remember it, make it long and complicated. Hint: generate a unique one at https://yourls.org/cookie
  Example: define( 'YOURLS_COOKIEKEY', 'qQ4KhL_pu|s@Zm7n#%:b^{A[vhm' );
• yourls_user_passwords
  A list of username(s) and password(s) allowed to access the site if private
  Passwords can either be in plain text, or encrypted: see https://yourls.org/userpassword for more information.
  Example: 'joe' => 'mypassword'

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URL Shortening settings

• YOURLS_URL_CONVERT
  URL shortening method: base 36 or 62. See FAQ for more explanations
• yourls_reserved_URL
  A list of reserved keywords that won't be used as short URLs. Define here negative, unwanted or potentially misleading keywords
  Example: 'porn', 'faggot', 'sex', 'nigger', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'dick'

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Optional settings

• YOURLS_PRIVATE_INFOS
  If YOURLS_PRIVATE is set to true, you can still make stat pages public. To do so, define with:
  define('YOURLS_PRIVATE_INFOS', false);
• YOURLS_PRIVATE_API
  If YOURLS_PRIVATE is set to true, you can still make your API public. To do so, define with:
  define('YOURLS_PRIVATE_API', false);
• YOURLS_NOSTATS
  If YOURLS_NOSTATS is set to true, redirects won't be logged and there will be not stats available.
  

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Advanced settings

• You can install YOURLS behind a firewall or a proxy: see Proxy Support
• File includes/Config/Config.php contains a few more undocumented but self explanatory and commented settings. Add them to your own config.php if you know what you're doing.
• There are numerous tips and guides on the Documentation, be sure to read them.

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Plugins for YOURLS

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Plugins?

Plugins are additional PHP scripts that extend the functionalities or features of YOURLS. The core of YOURLS is designed to be as light as possible and avoid bloat (implementing functions not everybody needs) and to allow for easy customization.

Using the plugin architecture, you can add new features to YOURLS without having to modify core files. This way, your changes won't be lost when you upgrade your YOURLS installation and you can easily activate and deactivate a plugin from the admin interface.

There's a growing number of plugins available: check the Plugin list.

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Documentation

Several sample plugins are included in the archive. Read the source and learn the concept. It's easy and fun!

Check the plugin API documentation to learn more

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YOURLS' API

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Features

• Generate or get existing short URLs, with sequential or custom keyword
• Get some statistics about your links: top clicked links, least clicked links, newest links
• Output format: JSON, XML, or simple raw text
• Authentify either with login/password or using a secure passwordless mechanism

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Usage

You need to send parameters to http://your-own-domain-here.com/yourls-api.php either via GET or POST (remember to URL-encode parameters if via GET). These parameters are:

• A valid username / password pair, or your signature (see Passwordless API requests)
• The requested action: "shorturl" (get short URL for a link), "expand" (get long URL of a shorturl), "url-stats" (get stats about one short URL), "stats" (get stats about your links) or "db-stats" (get global link and click count)
• With action = "shorturl" :
  • the url to shorten
  • optional keyword and title for custom short URLs
  • output format: either "jsonp", "json", "xml" or "simple"
• With action = "expand" :
  • the shorturl to expand (can be either 'abc' or 'http://site/abc')
  • output format: either "jsonp", "json", "xml" or "simple"
• With action = "url-stats" :
  • the shorturl for which to get stats (can be either 'abc' or 'http://site/abc')
  • output format: either "jsonp", "json" or "xml"
• With action = "stats" :
  • the filter: either "top", "bottom" , "rand" or "last"
  • the limit (maximum number of links to return)
  • output format: either "jsonp", "json" or "xml"
• With action = "db-stats" :
  • output format: either "jsonp", "json" or "xml"
• With action = "version" :
  • output format: either "jsonp", "json", "xml" or "simple"

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Sample requests

Example of a GET request with Javascript (using jQuery) to shorten a URL

var api_url  = 'http://sho.rt/yourls-api.php';
var response = $.get( api_url, {
    username: "your_username",
    password: "your_password",
    action:   "shorturl",
    format:   "json",
    url:      "http://ozh.org/"
    },
    // callback function that will deal with the server response
    function( data) {
        // now do something with the data, for instance show new short URL:
        alert(data.shorturl);
    }
);

Example of a POST request with PHP to expand a short URL

<?php
$username = 'your_username';
$password = 'your_password';
$api_url =  'http://sho.rt/yourls-api.php';

// Init the CURL session
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $api_url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);            // No header in the result
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // Return, do not echo result
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);              // This is a POST request
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array(     // Data to POST
        'shorturl' => 'ozh',
        'format'   => 'json',
        'action'   => 'expand',
        'username' => $username,
        'password' => $password
    ));

// Fetch and return content
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// Do something with the result. Here, we echo the long URL
$data = json_decode( $data );
echo $data->longurl;

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Sample returns

Sample return in JSON format for the shorturl action

{
  "url": {
    "keyword": "ozh",
    "url": "http:\/\/ozh.org",
    "title": "Ozh RICHARD \u00ab ozh.org",
    "date": "2014-10-24 16:01:39",
    "ip": "127.0.0.1"
  },
  "status": "success",
  "message": "http:\/\/ozh.org added to database",
  "title": "Ozh RICHARD \u00ab ozh.org",
  "shorturl": "http:\/\/sho.rt\/1f",
  "statusCode": 200
}

Sample return in XML format for the expand action

<result>
    <keyword>ozh</keyword>
    <shorturl>http://sho.rt/ozh</shorturl>
    <longurl>http://ozh.org/</longurl>
    <message>success</message>
    <statusCode>200</statusCode>
</result>

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Sample file

There's a sample PHP file included that serves as an example on how to play with the API

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Expand the API

You can easily implement custom API actions with a plugin. See the plugin list for examples.

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FAQ

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Server requirements and recommendations

1. We recommend PHP 7.4 or above
2. You will need at least MYSQL 5
3. A web server with mod_rewrite enabled
   Note: YOURLS can also run on Nginx, Cherokee and more !
4. HTTPS support
5. PHP CURL extension installed if you plan on playing with the API

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Limitations

• Maximum length of custom keyword is 100 characters
• That makes several septillions of quinquagintillion of possible short URLs (seriously. That's a 180-digit number).

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Difference Between Base 36 And Base 62 Encoding

• Base 36 encoding uses 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz for short URLs
• Base 62 encoding uses 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
• Stick to one setting, don't change after you've created links as it will change all your short URLs!
• Base 36 is the default and should be picked if you're not sure.

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Getting a short domain name for your YOURLS install

• Unless you plan on making it public and as popular as bit.ly, any shared hosting will be fine. Ozh runs all his YOURLS instance on Dreamhost and it works just great.
• Domainr is a fun search tool that might inspire and help you
• Aim for exotic top-level domains (.in, .im, .li ...), they're often cheap and a lot are still available. Gandi is a pretty comprehensive registrar, for instance.

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YOURLS needs its own .htaccess

• You cannot install YOURLS and, say, WordPress, in the same directory. Both need to handle URLs differently and need their own .htaccess file.
• If you want to install YOURLS on the same domain than your blog, give it its own (short) subdirectory, such as yourblog.com/s/ (for "short") or yourblog.com/x/ (for "exit")

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If YOURLS generates 404 for your short URLs

• Make sure mod_rewrite is enabled with your Apache server
• Make sure your .htaccess file looks like this one
• Check that your server Apache configuration allows use of .htaccess (AllowOverride All directive, ask your server admin)
• Eventually, refer to Troubleshooting first steps.

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Random versus sequential short URLs

• Out of the box, YOURLS generates sequential short URLS (ie ab31, then ab32 and so on)
• If you prefer random short URLs (ie j3kz1 then 13hz7 like Bitly does), just activate the plugin that comes with YOURLS.

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"Stats don't update as I think they should", "difference with Google Analytics", etc...

• Out of the box, YOURLS updates traffic stats every time a short URL is requested. Period.
• This said, some clients (like indexing bots, your internet browser) may skip requesting a short URL if they have the final destination known in cache.
• Conversely, other stat tools may use different techniques to track hits (using javascript or not, using IP address, filtering multiple requests by same client, etc...)
• Bottom line: your mileage may vary with different tools, but there is no bug in YOURLS regarding that matter.

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There is no index page at the root of the install

• Indeed. It's intended. It's up to the user to make what they need. Some will redirect the root to a different place, some make a public interface for anyone to shorten links, some make a portfolio. You make it. See Awesome YOURLS for inspiration!
• If you want to make a public interface and run your own little bitly.com, there's a sample file provided as an example: sample-public-front-page.txt. This implies important issues to deal with: spam, performance and security. Read Public Shortening for important information.

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Uppercase letters in short URLs are eaten up, eg "OmgOzh" becomes "mgzh" !

• Indeed. It's intended if you selected Base 36 (see above). Letters that don't belong to the character set, eg @#! or ABC, are removed.
• If you want to force lowercase, you'll need a plugin.

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Feedback, feature requests and bug reporting

1. Please don't get in touch directly by mail or Twitter. Please.
2. Read all the documentation.
3. Search in all the issues, open and closed.
4. Eventually raise a new issue. To do so, please read the contribute guidelines. Thanks!

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Community

YOURLS is open source, so the community of users plays a great role in its development, by contributing, helping others or giving feedback that helps improve the software.

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Resources

• The official YOURLS blog, for news, hints and showcase.
• The documentations: basic and advanced documentation, plugins, tips and more
• Awesome YOURLS is a curated list of YOURLS resources, plugins, translations, guides and third-party tools.

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Showcase

YOURLS is used by dozens of thousands of users : inviduals, anonymous, celebrities, universities, small teams, huge companies.

It is or has been used by Epic Games, the NASA, McLaren, Dreamhost and many more.

You will find several examples of YOURLS implementations on Awesome YOURLS.

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YOURLS and other platforms or frameworks

Contributors have made YOURLS work with various platforms, programming languages, applications or tools : Laravel, Symfony, WordPress, Perl, Ruby, Android, iOS, you name it.

Head to Awesome YOURLS and find the missing tool you didn't know you were needing.