Can I ask - why would anyone do this? Several URL shortening services of the past have shuttered and it has left the web littered with links to sites that can never be resolved (linkrot) - this to me just seems like a another surefire way to speedrun future deadlinks in forums etc. Why?
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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How so? I am hosting and maintaining it for my own work and links. I have every incentive to keep it up. And if it goes down, only my links to my own content go down. And, the reason I did this was Bluesky has a character limit.
This maybe isn't for everyone but I de-dockerified Shlink pretty quickly. Moving it to two nginx vhosts (server and admin) on a Shlink LXC and a centralized Postgres server made dealing with it a lot easier.
E.g., the initial API key shenanigans were less fiddly after I took more direct control.
Interesting. I deploy to my homelab with Docker so it was a fit for me. But I do want to tinker on the API to disable everything but GET. Can you share anything more about breaking it up?
It was mostly uneventful, to be honest. I downloaded the two apps (static admin and the php app), tossed them into /opt/www, and set up nginx to serve PHP. The config in the main app had a section for my Postgres settings and the docs gave the instructions on putting the default server configuration into the static site.
The only challenge was actually rather silly: I don't use PHP so it took me a bit to understand why apt install php installed Apache when I had already installed nginx. Once I found php-fpm it was smooth sailing from there.
Another great option is Yourls. I’ve been using it for years and it’s been fabulous
I looked at yourls, too. I found Shlink devex to be more mature and the automated geolocation-blocking integration sold me.
It also hasn't had a release in 2 years and is a self-described "set of PHP scripts". Doesn't fit my standard for what I deploy to my homelab
Totally fair.
Do you know if there is any way to use this in combination with Raycast?
I'm not a raycast user, but it has a CLI and REST API, so if Raycast has any extensibility, my guess is yes
Oh snap now I just need to learn how to code