Leanks

v1.4.0

YOURLS, for 2026.

The proven self-hosted link shortener, with the modern dashboard it never had. Free and open source, no SaaS bill, and your links and data stay on your own server.

View on GitHub Free & open source · MIT licensed
  • Self-hosted, no lock-in. Runs on ordinary PHP/MySQL shared hosting — your links, your database, your server.
  • Built on YOURLS. Stock redirect engine, database and click tracking underneath — a modern dashboard on top.
  • Everything included. Password protection, expiration, UTM tags, QR codes and analytics — no upsell tier.
The Leanks dashboard: a one-line create form, filters and search, totals, and a list of short links with tags, click counts, creation dates and QR / stats / edit / delete actions
The Leanks dashboard — a link list, not a plugin admin screen.

Features

What a hosted shortener charges for, included.

Leanks wraps YOURLS' redirect engine with the features a paid link-management product sells as premium tiers — running on hosting you already pay for.

One-line link creation

Destination, short link and title in a single row. Password, expiration, tags and UTM are one click away.

Password-protected links

Require a password before a short link redirects anywhere.

Link expiration

By date, by a maximum click count, or both at once.

UTM campaign builder

A built-in UTM form with a live preview of the final URL.

Tags

Colored tags you can assign to links, show as a column, and filter by.

A list that scales

Sort by clicks or date, search, bulk-delete, favicons on every link, and a remembered page size.

QR codes

Generated client-side for any link, downloadable as PNG.

Analytics dashboard

Clicks across 9 time ranges, filtered by country, device, browser, referrer and more — with flags and icons.

Default domain redirect

Send visitors who open your bare short domain to any URL you choose, instead of a blank page.

CSV import & export

Migrate in from another shortener, or move between Leanks installs. Clicks, dates and tags travel too.

Light, dark, your color

Light, dark or system theme, plus any accent color. Shades follow automatically.

One-click updates

Checksum-verified, with an automatic backup and rollback if anything goes wrong.

The create-link form with password protection, expiration, tags and UTM campaign fields, and a live preview of the final URL
Every option in one form, with a live UTM preview.
The analytics page: a clicks chart with time-range and filter controls, and ranked breakdowns by link, referrer, country, device, browser and OS
Analytics with filters and ranked breakdowns.
The settings page: theme, accent color, default domain redirect, and CSV import and export
Theme, accent color, and import/export in Settings.

How it works

YOURLS underneath, a SaaS dashboard on top.

Untouched

YOURLS core

Redirect logic, MySQL schema, click tracking, plugin API — includes/, stock.

Added

Leanks plugin

Hooks redirect_shorturl; checks password / expiry metadata before a click is logged.

Custom

Leanks dashboard

A separate front end in app/, talking to YOURLS' own admin-ajax.php.

YOURLS is plain PHP, MIT licensed, has no build step, and stores everything in a couple of MySQL tables — a good fit for cheap shared/cPanel hosting. Leanks keeps that core completely stock and adds a small plugin (user/plugins/leanks) plus an entirely custom front end (app/) on top, rather than patching YOURLS' own files. YOURLS itself stays upgradeable in place.

Password protection, expiration and click limits are enforced by hooking YOURLS' redirect_shorturl action: before a click is logged and redirected, Leanks checks a small metadata table and can intercept the request with a password prompt or an "expired" page. Everything else — the redirect itself, click counting, referrer/geo logging — is stock YOURLS.

The dashboard talks to YOURLS' existing admin-ajax.php for link create/edit/delete, reusing its built-in nonce-based CSRF protection and session auth, plus a handful of custom leanks_* actions the plugin registers for listing, stats, and CSV import.

Installation

Running in about five minutes.

PHP 8.1+ MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB pdo_mysql extension Apache + mod_rewrite

  1. Create a database and database user

    On shared/cPanel hosting the setup wizard connects to an existing database — it usually can't create one itself. In cPanel: MySQL® Databases → create a database → create a user → Add User to Database with all privileges.

  2. Upload the repository to your web root

    Keep the folder structure intact, e.g. into public_html.

  3. Run the setup wizard

    Visit https://your-domain.com/setup/ and enter the database details and an admin username/password. This writes user/config.php, creates the tables, and activates the Leanks plugin automatically.

  4. Remove the setup folder

    Delete (or password-protect) /setup once installed — it can rewrite your database credentials and shouldn't stay reachable.

  5. Log in

    Go to https://your-domain.com/app/ with the admin account created in step 3.

Prefer to configure by hand? Copy user/config-sample.php to user/config.php, fill in your settings, then visit /admin/install.php (YOURLS' own installer) followed by /admin/plugins.php to activate the "Leanks" plugin.