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My Experience Building a URL Shortener Like TinyURL
I built my own TinyURL-style URL shortener to explore how these systems work under the hood. From generating short codes to handling redirects and storage, this article covers my hands-on experience, the design decisions I made, and what I learned from building a URL shortener from scratch.
You know that moment when you’re sharing a link to your latest blog post, and the URL looks like https://developer-service.blog/build-your-own-low-cost-cloud-backup-with-hetzner-storage-boxes/?
Yeah, that’s not going to fit nicely anywhere.
I faced this problem constantly while managing my blog, sharing free guides, and tracking GitHub repository statistics across different platforms.
Twitter’s character limits, newsletter formatting issues, clean QR codes for printed materials, every platform seemed to hate my long, descriptive URLs.
Sure, I could use bit.ly or TinyURL, but then I’d be giving up control over my links, paying for premium features, and most importantly, losing valuable analytics data.
So I did what any self-respecting developer would do: I spent a weekend building my own URL shortener. And you know what? It was way more interesting than I expected.
