Create and manage outbound links without hassle.
Use cases
- Log clicks to outbound links from your site.
- Host your own URL shortener.
Table of Contents
- Bare minimum dependencies.
- Simple to setup and use.
- Analytics on your count - you have your data.
- Redirects your way - client-side or server-side.
- Use shortened URLs or complete - up to you.
Requires:
- NodeJS (latest LTS release)
- MongoDB
- A star on this repo.
npm installnpm start- Rename the file
config.example.jsontoconfig.json. - Read the comments and modify the file accordingly.
Where to store the config file?
- The root of this project (where the example file is), or
- Anywhere you want and set the
OUTBOUND_CONFIG_JSONenvironment variable to the path.
They are links to websites other than your own.
Well. A lot of websites seem to log every click to outbound links for the purpose of analytics.
Example, Google, Slack, Twitter, Facebook.
Try clicking a Google Search Result, link posted in a Slack/Facebook message or on Twitter.
They don't just directly open up. They first go to some middleman (like https://slack-redir.net, or https://lm.facebook.com, or https://t.co), which redirects you to the expected link.
Nope. There are two ways of redirecting.
-
Server-side: Do a HTTP 301 to the other side. The specification can be found here: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/SVR1.html.
-
Client-side: Send HTML to the browser. The browser does the rest. No JavaScript. HTML meta tags are enough. Find the specification here: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H76.html.
The client-side way is the preferred one and reliable . Many times there are devices and browsers which limit the number of redirects, making server-side redirects fail.
Ther are use-cases like Twitter, where you don't want long URL, or you need to provide links to be shared on by the users. There you go.