LinkForge

LinkForge is a full stack web application with a URL shortener that generates short trackable links with custom aliases and a YouTube downloader.

Features

• Shorten any URL to a clean short link
• Custom aliases (e.g. /my-link)
• Click tracking on every visit shows the number of times you've visited the video.
• Download as MP4 video or MP3 audio
• Quality selection — Best, 720p, 480p, 360p

Tech Stack

• HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• PostgreSQL (hosted on Neon.tech)
• FastAPI, Python, SQLAlchemy, Pydantic v2, yt-dlp, Uvicorn

Note: The downloader uses browser cookie authentication which works well when you run it on your own machine.

1. Clone & install

git clone <your-repo>
cd url-shortener
python -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Set up your database

PostgreSQL for Database

• neon.tech

Copy your connection string that will look like this: (postgresql://user:pass@host/dbname)

3. Configure environment

cp .env.example .env

Preview