Base
Hardened build
minimal ports, security patches applied at build time
YOURLS
Azure
Developer Tools
1 variation
YOURLS, the self hosted URL shortener that keeps your short links and their click analytics on infrastructure you control.
Variations
This product is available in the build below. Open it for the operating system, cloud and version detail, or read its deployment guide.
| Product | Cloud | Operating system | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YOURLS URL Shortener on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | Azure | Ubuntu 24.04 | Standard | View · Guide |
Overview
YOURLS (Your Own URL Shortener) is an established open source link shortener you run yourself. It turns long URLs into short ones under your own domain, letting you either auto generate a keyword or choose your own, so a link can read as something meaningful rather than as a random string. Every link you create is tracked: YOURLS records each click and reports hits over time, the referrer sources sending traffic, and a country breakdown, so the analytics that a hosted shortener would keep for itself stay with you.
Beyond the admin interface it offers a bookmarklet for shortening the page you are reading, a full REST API for creating and querying links from your own code, and a plugin system for extending its behaviour. It suits anyone who wants short links without handing their traffic data to a third party: marketing and communications teams publishing campaign links, publishers and developers who want branded links under a domain they own, and anyone replacing a hosted shortener that could rate limit, expire, or discontinue the links they depend on.
Why the cloudimg image
cloudimg delivers YOURLS fully installed with its web server, PHP runtime and database, so a working shortener answers the moment the instance boots and the installer is already completed. Short link routing is configured in the web server itself rather than left to the rewrite rules upstream generates, which a default web server configuration silently ignores, so links resolve correctly from the first boot instead of returning not found. The image carries no usable credential: on the first boot of every instance a one shot service generates a database password and an administrator password unique to that instance, writing the password to a file only the root user can read and storing it in the configuration only as a bcrypt hash. The application follows whatever address you browse it on, so it works on the instance address immediately and keeps working after you attach your own domain or the address changes, with no configuration edit. Your links and click analytics live on a dedicated data volume kept separate from the operating system disk. The base is fully patched with unattended security upgrades enabled, and every deployment is paired with a step by step deploy guide and backed by 24/7 cloudimg support.
Common uses
- Branded short links under a domain you own
- Campaign link tracking with click analytics you keep
- Replacing a hosted shortener with a private API driven one
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