Self Hosting

Pckd - A Beautiful and Simple Self Hosted Link Shorter

A simple, elegant link shortner with powerful features. Self host it yourself and start shortening and tracking links!

Jeremy

Apr 29, 2022 — 3 min read

It was a normal afternoon on a Tuesday and I was browsing along as I usually do on Github when I came across this gem, Pckd. A self hosted link shortner with all kinds of goodies but yet it's simple, un-bloated and pleasing to the eyes.

Now we know there are plenty of link shortners out there that you can indeed self host yourself. However, Pckd takes on a different approach not only aesthetically, but also some features you might not see in other link shortners.

Features

💻 Device details like OS Version and Device Model
🪟 Browser Name and including version
Edit links after they're created
Custom Loading/Redirecting Screen 💯
[On Roadmap!] Quick Redirections in 150ms! 😱
Fast, Reliable and Secure 🔐
Secret Storage 👮 and handling using 💻 environment variables
Built on Modern and Well-used Technologies like React, GraphQL & NodeJS
Use your own DBMS 🥳. Pckd is compatible with MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and many more
Creating short urls (we call them 🔗 pckds) from long ones with, or without an account
Customize back-halfs on every 🔗 pckd
Deploy to custom 🔌 URL and Infrastructure 💿
Track 🕵️‍♂️ each and every click on a 🔗 pckd, and retrieve

After looking at all the aka.ms links out there which flood windows, along with the numerous time saving been prompted to buy premium plans from bit.ly while shortening my URLs, the decision of having a personal URL shortener hosted on a custom domain for free caught wind. Starting out by looking at GitHub for a JavaScript-based URL shortener, no one stood out and had minimal features. So, I decided to create my own URL shortener along with the help of a few friends, and got what this repository contains.

What makes up Pckd?

React JS - For the frontend of the app
Apollo GraphQL Server v3 - For querying the backend from the frontend efficiently
GraphQL Template By Mohit - Boilerplate Template used for initializing the backend
Prisma - The ORM used for the app
Any relational or non-relational database that Prisma supports
Redux w/ Redux Toolkit - For handling states across the application

Pckd is in active development so, not all of the features you see above have been implimented yet. When you install it, you will see basic link shortening and that's about it. When I spoke to Mohit, the developer, he said much more will be done when school exams are over. So expect a barrage of updates to come. Mohit is active on Discord if you want to join the community he has setup over there.

Final Notes and Thoughts

There is a Pckd Docker Compose stack that can be used to quickly spin up an instance. So jump over to the Pckd Github repo and have a look. be sure to star the repo if you find it useful!