clubshort

A minimal URL shortener for teams and clubs — no accounts, no passwords, no bloat. Easy & cheap hosting with just one PHP file and a MySQL table.

Your sports club or volunteer group needs short links for flyers and WhatsApp. You want anyone to be able to create them — but nobody wants another account, non-technical members won't remember a password they use twice a year, and you can't let just anyone publish under your domain.

Regular shorteners are either open to everyone (no control) or locked behind accounts (friction). Self-hosted options like YOURLS or Shlink are powerful but don't fit the "no accounts" requirement.

No accounts for submitters. Anyone submits a URL and slug — no login required. A simple arithmetic CAPTCHA keeps basic spam bots out.

One admin, full control. A single password gates the approval panel. Nothing goes live without approval.

Dead simple to host. One PHP file, one .htaccess, one MySQL table. No Composer, no Node, no Docker — runs on any shared hosting plan.

Webhook notifications (optional). Configure a webhook URL to automatically notify the admin when a new link is submitted (e.g. via a Webhook-to-push-notification mobile app). A flexible condition expression lets you verify the response to inform users whether they need to notify the admin manually in case of a failure.

REST API (optional). A simple API lets external tools submit links and manage approvals without touching the admin panel. Protected by a Bearer token.

QR codes included. Every active link gets a QR code download. Saves time for everyone.

Good fit: Sports clubs, scout groups, church communities — any group where many people occasionally need short links but nobody wants to manage accounts.

Not a fit: You need analytics, click tracking, link expiry, or high submission volume. Use YOURLS or Shlink instead.

• Apache with mod_rewrite
• PHP 7.1+ with pdo_mysql
• MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB

git clone <repo>
cd clubshort
cp .env.example .env # fill in DB credentials and admin password

Point your Apache document root to httpdocs/. The .htaccess handles slug routing.

Note on .env parsing: To keep this dependency-free, index.php parses .env itself with a minimal line-by-line reader. It does not support multiline values, quoted strings, or variable interpolation — plain KEY=value pairs only, comments starting with # are ignored. That covers everything in .env.example.

Create one table:

CREATE TABLE redirects (
 slug VARCHAR(255) PRIMARY KEY,
 redirectUrl VARCHAR(2048) NOT NULL,
 metadata JSON,
 enabled BOOLEAN DEFAULT 0,
 createdAt TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
 updatedAt TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in values:

Set API_KEY in .env to enable. All requests require the header Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>.

MIT