What is redir?

Redir is a self-hosted URL shortener, think Bitly, but running on your own server and your own domain. You give it a long web address, it gives you a short one, and anyone who clicks the short link gets redirected to the original destination. Because you host it yourself, you keep full control over your data and your branding. Beyond basic shortening, it offers a few things you'd expect from a commercial product. You can create semantic short links like yourdomain.com/s/promo-deal instead of random gibberish. There's an admin dashboard for managing links, a public index page that lists all your non-private shortcuts, and built-in visitor analytics showing page views, unique visitors, referrers, devices, and locations. You can also set links to go live only after a certain time, keep some links private so they don't appear in the public list, and show visitors a warning before redirecting them to external sites. This would suit a small company, a developer with a personal brand, or anyone running a project that needs short links without relying on a third-party service. For example, a startup could use it to share clean links in marketing emails while keeping click analytics in-house. A developer could also use the Go Vanity Import feature, which lets you host short links that point to Go package documentation, a niche but handy capability if you publish open-source Go libraries. The project is written in Go and compiles into a single binary, which makes deployment straightforward. It requires a MongoDB database to store links and analytics. You can run it directly or deploy with Docker, and configuration is handled through a YAML file. It also ships with GDPR-friendly pages like imprint, privacy, and contact templates, which is a thoughtful touch for anyone operating a public-facing service in Europe. The front-end dashboard is built separately and embedded into the final binary, so the whole thing ships as one self-contained executable.