July 1st, 2024

Show HN: An open-source alternative to Bitly

The "Sink" project on GitHub is a link shortener tool emphasizing simplicity, speed, and security. It offers URL compression, analytics, customizable slugs, AI-generated slugs, and link expiration settings. Operating on Cloudflare, it uses Nuxt, Cloudflare Workers KV, Cloudflare Workers Analytics Engine, Shadcn-vue, and Tailwind CSS. Access the Sink GitHub Repository for more.

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Show HN: An open-source alternative to Bitly

The "Sink" project on GitHub is a link shortener tool that offers URL compression, analytics tracking, serverless deployment, customizable slugs, AI-generated slugs, and link expiration settings. It operates entirely on Cloudflare and utilizes technologies like Nuxt, Cloudflare Workers KV, Cloudflare Workers Analytics Engine, Shadcn-vue, and Tailwind CSS. The project's key focus is on simplicity, speed, and security. For those interested in contributing or learning more about the project, the Sink GitHub Repository can be accessed for further exploration.

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By @cpursley - 4 months
Looks great but why dependency and lock in to a specific cloud provider?
By @Brajeshwar - 4 months
Cool. Checking it out.

For those looking for more options, Dub[1] is a matured open-source[2] link shortener with Analytics.

For not-so-large volumes of links, say for friends-family, and the occasional public links, you can run something off Github Pages[3] with their built-in Jekyll + Redirect-From Plugin[4]. If you do not want to, you do not even need to have the code run locally, just edit on Github. I run one to easily share links for the family and relatives (photos, that document link, along with the Rick-Roll Video).

Tip: If one wants to run an indie or personal or family/friends shortlink for easy sharing, try to have it on your own domain. This allowed me to moved between tools that powers it.

1. https://dub.co

2. https://github.com/dubinc/dub

3. https://pages.github.com

4. https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll-redirect-from

By @ohadron - 4 months
PSA: Don't shorten URLs if you don't have to because if the shortener ceases working your link is dead.
By @prmoustache - 4 months
There is no real good use case for url shorteners. If the platform doesn't support hyperlinks, that platform is simply not up to the task.