Qwa.la is a simple, free, powerful link shortener. It was built out of a discontent with existing options—some required accounts for more powerful features, while others featured unnappealing designs and were unpleasant to use. Qwa.la solves these problems, making it a great, go-to solution for link shortening. There aren't any features behind a pay wall, and there are no ads. And it's open source!

Get Started

Qwa.la is written entirely in JavaScript, so as long as you have Node.js installed, it should be easy to get the server up and running. For our database, we use Firebase's Cloud Firestore, and for HTML templating we use Handlebars.

Once you've cloned the repository, there are a few things to configure:

• server/config/firebaseServiceKey.json: This file is used for Firebase authentication. You should replace the placeholder credentials here with your own Firebase information. You can read more about this process in the Firebase docs.
• server/config/settings.json: This file hold basic customization settings to change the functionality of the app. Most of these are pre-filled with reasonable defaults, but you can edit them if you want.
• web/static/js/src/config.js: This file also holds basic configuration, but for the frontend.

Once you have your configuration setup, you should be able to do a simple

npm install
npm run build
npm start

to start the server! 🎉

More Qwa.la

Qwa.la offers numerous other methods of link shortening which are all listed below.

• JavaScript Library: The Qwa.la JS library provides easy access to the Qwa.la link shortening features. Find it on GitHub or read the full documentation.

• Web API: The Qwa.la web API exposes public Qwa.la functionality through HTTP requests. Read the documentation to get started.

• Mobile App: Qwa.la has a mobile app powered by React Native. Find it on GitHub.

• Telegram Bot: Qwa.la has a Telegram bot in order to make link shortening quick and easy for Telegram users. Read the documentation or find it find it on GitHub.

• Discord Bot: Qwa.la has a Telegram bot in order to make link shortening quick and easy for Discord users. Read the documentation or find it find it on GitHub.