Free Link Shortener

A lightweight WordPress plugin that creates branded short links on your own domain, counts clicks, and gives you detailed reports — no third-party service required.

Overview

Free Link Shortener turns long URLs into clean, branded short links served from your own WordPress site (e.g. https://yoursite.com/go/abc123). It is ideal for sharing posts and WooCommerce products, tracking campaign performance, and keeping all your click data in your own database instead of an external shortener.

Features

• Branded short links on your own domain (/go/your-code).
• Automatic or custom slugs — let the plugin generate a random code, or type your own.
• Detailed click tracking — date/time, IP address, country, browser, and referrer.
• Per-link reports inside a dedicated admin dashboard.
• Editor metabox — create and copy a short link directly from the post/page/product edit screen.
• AJAX row actions — shorten or copy a link straight from the Posts/Products list, with no page reload.
• One-click copy to clipboard (with a fallback for non-HTTPS environments).
• Translation ready (i18n) — full text domain support with an included .pot file.
• Secure — nonce-protected forms and manage_options capability checks (admins only).

Requirements

• WordPress 5.6 or higher
• PHP 7.4 or higher
• (Optional) WooCommerce — for short links on product pages

Installation

1. Download or clone this repository into your plugins directory:

   cd wp-content/plugins
   git clone https://github.com/your-username/free-link-shortener.git

2. Activate Free Link Shortener from Plugins in your WordPress dashboard.
3. Go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes once to flush rewrite rules (required for /go/... links to work).

Note: If you upgrade from an older version, deactivate and reactivate the plugin once so the database schema updates safely.

Usage

Create a link manually

Go to Link Shortener in the admin menu, enter a target URL, optionally set a custom slug, and click Create Short Link.

Shorten a post or product

• From the editor: Use the Short Link metabox in the sidebar to generate and copy a link instantly.
• From the list: Hover over any post/product row and click Shorten link (AJAX, no reload). Once created, it becomes a Copy short link action.

View reports

On the Link Shortener page, click Report next to any link to see every recorded click with its details.

Short Link Structure

By default, links use the /go/ base path:

https://yoursite.com/go/{slug}

To change the base segment, edit the constant in the main plugin file and re-save your permalinks:

define( 'FLS_SLUG_BASE', 'go' ); // e.g. change 'go' to 'link' or 's'

Project Structure

free-link-shortener/
├── free-link-shortener.php       # Bootstrap / loader
├── assets/
│   └── admin.js                  # Clipboard + AJAX logic
├── languages/                    # Translation files (.pot / .po / .mo)
└── includes/
    ├── class-plugin.php          # Orchestrator + asset loading
    ├── class-installer.php       # Database tables / activation
    ├── class-links.php           # Data layer + click logging
    ├── class-redirect.php        # Rewrite rules + redirect
    ├── class-admin-page.php      # Dashboard + reports
    └── class-integrations.php    # Metabox + row actions

Translations

The plugin is fully translatable. A free-link-shortener.pot template is included in the languages/ folder.

To add a translation:

1. Open the .pot file in Poedit.
2. Create a new translation for your locale (e.g. fa_IR).
3. Save it as free-link-shortener-{locale}.po / .mo in the languages/ folder.

To regenerate the .pot file with WP-CLI:

wp i18n make-pot . languages/free-link-shortener.pot

Privacy & External Services

Country detection uses the free ip-api.com service. Visitor IP addresses are sent to this service to resolve the country name. The free tier is limited to 45 requests per minute and is intended for non-commercial use. If you prefer not to use it, you can disable or replace the country lookup in includes/class-links.php.

Roadmap

• [ ] CSV export of click reports
• [ ] Daily click charts
• [ ] Link enable/disable & expiration
• [ ] Bulk shorten action

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue to discuss a feature or bug before submitting a pull request. Follow the WordPress Coding Standards for PHP and JavaScript.

License

This plugin is licensed under the GPLv2 (or later). See the LICENSE file for details.

Author

Hamed Takmil 🌐 silvercover.ir

If you find this plugin useful, please consider giving the repository a ⭐ on GitHub!