Build Your Own Url Shortener For Free!

URL shorteners are awesome.  The less characters, the better!  But what happens when that server goes down or some network issue prevents people from getting to your links?

Nothing.  Blank pages.

Better yet, why would you want to brand someone elses domain name?  Think about all the traffic and notoriety you’re giving tinyurl and is.gd?  Can you use that same traffic to your advantage?

I have a solution.  Build your own!  In fact, check out mine at j.dro.hn!  The software I used was Kissabe, an open source script hosted at Google Code.

The install is really pretty simple.

1. Get yourself a domain name from Godaddy and web hosting through HostGator.  Both are solid companies.
2. Upload all of the files to where you want it installed (e.g. the root of your domain name).
3. Create a new MySQL database called “kissa”
4. Import kissa.sql to your kissa database using the command line or phpMyAdmin (don’t use kissa_v1.sql)
5. Edit config.php and change the MySQL string with your database username and password. Make sure the path
   to your database is correct (if it’s not localhost).
6. Then edit create.php at line 30 or where is says
   $short_url = “http://kissa.be/$code”;
   to read
   $short_url = “http://yourdomian.com/$code”;
7. Then rename htaccess.example to just .htaccess
8. Start shortening!

Let me know what you think!

Tagged as: create url shortener, create your own url shortener, how to make a url shortener, make your own url, make your own url shortener, url shortener script