In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process of Simple-URL-Shortener on Arch Linux. Simple-URL-Shortener is an open-source URL shortener written in PHP. It allows users to shorten URLs and also tracks the statistics of each shortened link.
Before we begin, make sure that you have the following:
Simple-URL-Shortener requires a web server to run. Apache is the most popular web server used on Linux systems.
To install Apache, run the following command:
sudo pacman -S apache
After the installation completes, start the Apache service using the following command:
sudo systemctl start httpd
To enable Apache to start automatically upon system startup, run:
sudo systemctl enable httpd
Simple-URL-Shortener is written in PHP, so we need to install PHP and some PHP extensions to make the application work. To install PHP, run the following command:
sudo pacman -S php php-apache
After the installation completes, restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:
sudo systemctl restart httpd
Simple-URL-Shortener uses MariaDB or MySQL as its database. In this tutorial, we will use MariaDB.
To install MariaDB, run the following command:
sudo pacman -S mariadb
After the installation completes, start the MariaDB service using the following command:
sudo systemctl start mariadb
Run the following command to secure the MariaDB installation:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Now that we have installed MariaDB, let's create a database and user for Simple-URL-Shortener.
Log in to MariaDB using the root account:
sudo mysql -u root -p
Create a database for Simple-URL-Shortener:
CREATE DATABASE shorturl;
Create a user for the application and grant it all privileges on the shorturl database:
CREATE USER 'shorturl'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL ON shorturl.* TO 'shorturl'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
Replace password with a strong password for the user.
To download Simple-URL-Shortener, we need to install Git:
sudo pacman -S git
Create a directory to host the application files:
sudo mkdir -p /srv/http/shorturl
Change to the new directory:
cd /srv/http/shorturl
Clone the Simple-URL-Shortener repository:
sudo git clone https://github.com/azlux/Simple-URL-Shortener.git .
Change the ownership of the application files to the Apache user:
sudo chown -R http:http /srv/http/shorturl
Copy the configuration file template:
sudo cp config.sample.php config.php
Edit the config.php file and set the database details:
$dbhost = "localhost";
$dbname = "shorturl";
$dbuser = "shorturl";
$dbpasswd = "password";
Replace password with the password you set in Step 4.
Open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost/shorturl/. You should see the Simple-URL-Shortener homepage.
Now, let's test the URL shortening functionality. Enter a long URL in the input field and click the "Shorten URL" button. You should see a short URL that redirects to the original URL when clicked.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Simple-URL-Shortener on your Arch Linux system. You can now use it to shorten your URLs and track their clicks. If you want to customize the application or customize the short URLs, refer to the official documentation.
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