Simple URL Shortening Solution Using Redirect Pages

Productivity Sauce
Using an application like YOURLS, you can host a link shortening solution on your own server. But if you need to maintain only a handful of shortened URLs, installing a full-blown URL shortening application is overkill. Instead, you can use a dead-simple solution based on HTML pages containing the REFRESH metatag. For example, to set up a shorter link to my Wikimedia Commons gallery, I created the following HTML file and saved it as a gallery page on my server:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title>Redirect</title> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/Dmitri_Popov"></head> <body> Redirecting... Click <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/Dmitri_Popov">here</a> if nothing happens. </body> </html>
Now, instead of typing the http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/Dmitri_Popov URL, I use a shorter one: dmpop.dyndns.org/gallery. Creating redirect pages manually can quickly become a nuisance, so I wrote a dead-simple shell script for that:
#!/bin/bash echo "Short name:" read shrt echo "URL:" read url cat redir.tmpl | sed 's/URL/'$url'/' > $shrt
The script uses the redir.tmpl file as a template, where the actual URLs are replaced by the URL placeholder.
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.