How to Create Branded Short URLs With YOURLS

On Twitter, short URLs give you more space to tweet.

There are dozens of URL shorteners available; bit.ly and Digg both use them, for example.

But it’s difficult to stand out when your URLs look like everyone else’s (or, worse, look like spam).

Here’s the answer: as long as you have a short domain name, you can host your own URL shortening service for free with YOURLS. (Others prefer LESSN, but we’ll stick to YOURLS here for simplicity’s sake).

How YOURLS Works

YOURLS is a self-hosting PHP script. It runs on your own web server. To install it, you’ll need to be able to create a new database.

Options are set in the configuration file.

YOURLS can be run in public or private mode. We’d strongly advise never using it in public mode – it’ll be a target for spam and abuse.

Once YOURLs is set up, you’ll install a bookmarklet to your browser and click it whenever you want to generate a shortened URL.

YOURLS Features

YOURLS offers a WordPress plugin that integrates YOURLS into your blog, which is handy. The plugin serves as a bridge to Twitter and can auto-tweet new posts.

YOURLS’ API can be used to extend its capabilities, including plugins for other platforms or standalone applications.

YOURLS also tracks statistics like this:

Pros and Cons of YOURLS

YOURLS looks very professional, and it can actually generate shorter URLs than many major services because its database is far smaller.

But you will need a short domain – ideally shorter than 8 characters including the TLD. You might need to be creative and register a new one.

Also, YOURLS cannot share a directory with anything else because of its .htaccess rules. So you can’t run WordPress and YOURLS from the same folder. You’ll need to run it from a subfolder, such as /a or /z.

Is it worth using? Personlised URLs look great, but while it’s nifty, it might be overkill for you. If you have the time and inclination, by all means try YOURLS on your site.