Straight from the Shrink-Your-URLS-With-A-Custom-Branded-Self-Hosted-Solution Department: if you're following my tweets, you already know that I released YOURLS 1.4.1 yesterday. What's in there? Good stuff for sure, but even better stuff are on their way :)
YOURLS, now
YOURLS 1.4.1 brings several little stuff, minor cosmetic tweaks and invisible fixes, but also a few exciting things. The main improvements and features of this version are:
- A very cool passwordless authentication for API requests, so that you don't have to send your login and password in the wild if you're using YOURLS with third party sites or services.
In short, instead of crafting requests with login=joe&username=p4ssw0rd, you can use a parameter signature which can be time limited (think "nonce" as in WordPress) - MiXeD CaSe short URLs now fully working. It used to be a
crapbrokenbeta feature, it's now completely reliable
Check the short changelog for most of the details, or if you're brave enough the complete commit log. Then obviously download the new YOURLS and upgrade or start playing with it.
YOURLS, tomorrow
Another improvement in this project is that I published a Road map to give users — and definitely myself — a clearer vision of where we're going.
I'd like the next iteration of YOURLS to introduce two major changes
- A plugin API. Just like in WordPress because we all love this and it's so cool :) There is a number of features I'm reluctant to put in core because I find them useless or stupid (like, random short URL generation instead of sequential) but they would be trivial to implement as a plugin. A real plugin API and architecture would make it easy to enhance your own YOURLS with custom spam protection, 404 checks, alternative geolocation provider, anything you'd like. It should also make my core coding task easier (and more fun)
- A proper database structure. When it started, YOURLS was a simple table with few info stored, and it wouldn't grow beyond this. But then I added a table to save options and settings, but it wouldn't grow beyond this. But then I added a table to save logs and stats. And I'm starting to suspect it might grow beyond this :)
I'm definitely guilty of not having aimed high from the beginning, and having a decent DB schema will allow faster implementation of pretty cool features: tagging URLs, annotate them, why not manage users, and so on.
The complete future feature set I'm willing to bring into YOURLS 1.5 is quite significant, so instead of waiting another twelve years between versions till everything is implemented, I think I'll start to Release Early, Release Often and progressively ship versions 1.5.1, 1.5.2 etc… with a few new stuff each time. In other words: either follow me on Twitter or this blog so you don't miss the fun :)
Happy URL shortening!
Shorter URL
Want to share or tweet this post? Please use this short URL: http://ozh.in/rt
I just upgraded. Smooth sailing my brother.
About to head off and upgrade now. Thanks for the release and I look forward to the future of YOURLS :)
Installed v 1.4.2 at xioup.us today – easy install, great instructions, up and running in a matter of minutes!
Awesome work – thanks for sharing!
Question: Is the plugin wpmu-safe? I'll give it a go on my wpmu installation and report back if I don't hear anything back in the next couple of days.
Looks good in wpmu following the standard installation procedure. I do have another question, however. I can look this up in the code, but I wonder if there's a safe way to grab the generated short link for use elsewhere in my page?
As I said, I can look this up in the plugin code, but if you change something in the future, it may break my code :-)
Basically, I'd like to be able to grab the generated short URL and use it wherever I want on a new post or page, via PHP. I just need to know the variable name, and whether you consider it safe :-)
Again, thanks for sharing! Awesome work…
TexInWien » It should work with MU, thanks for reporting any issue though. For your question, please check the plugin doc.
Thanks! Somehow I overlooked the template tags in the docs. Sorry to bother you…
i've seen your lib and i think it's great
i need to do something similar in .net and i've thought to "migrate" your lib with minus changes – could release it as gpl and "based on YOURLS"
but it could be great to talk about your planned road map.
For my (release early, release often) starting version i only need shorten/expand, but also planning rest api, oauth, etc
Drop me a line if you're interested!
(I'd love to know about your database changes!)
Thanks!
How can i short more than 1 url suddenly?
Marco » don't understand
I think Marco is asking how he can shorten multiple URL's simultaneously.
yes that i mean
Marco » out of the box, you cant. This said, that's easy to make a quick script: input several URLs in a textarea, then foreach( split("\n", $_POST['urls']) as $url) { $short .= yourls_add_new_link( $url ); }
URL Shortening at your finger tip. :) | Lazy Blogger