Senka Wolf
URL Tech
Website / URL Shortener / YOURLS Retheme
About
URL Tech was a free URL shortener for turning long, ugly links into short, memorable ones. It had no ads, and it never shared or sold your data. A no-nonsense service!
It ran on urlte.ch from January 2023 until December 2024, when I shut it down.
Challenge
To create a URL shortener that wouldn't share or sell information based on usage and web traffic.
Solution
I self-hosted YOURLS, an open-source URL shortener, so I had complete control over the service and its data. I built a custom website as the front end. I also fully rethemed the YOURLS interface with injected JavaScript, so the whole service had one consistent look without changing YOURLS's own code.
Gallery
Results
URL Tech delivered a privacy-focused URL shortener with no ties to corporations or data brokers. It reached far more people than I expected, with visitors from 161 countries.
That reach brought problems. I was the service's main user, but a few people who found it tried to use it to hide redirects to harmful or malicious content. My hosting provider's security team contacted me several times about this. Policing the links became more work than a small personal project could justify. I shut the service down in December 2024 and let the domain expire.
It taught me that running a service open to the public is a real responsibility. Abuse prevention matters as much as features, and server providers keep a much closer eye on their customers' traffic than you might expect.
364
Shortened URLs
71,000+
Link Clicks
161
Countries Reached
Figures from the service's database up to June 2024.