My Own URL Shortener for my Homelab

There's something satisfying about cleaning up the little things in a homelab.

Not the big flashy projects. Not the migrations, the dashboards, or the reverse proxies that eat up your whole evening. I mean the smaller annoyances. The repeated copy-pasting of long internal URLs. The bookmarks that multiply for no good reason. The links you send yourself in Discord or save in notes, only to forget what they were meant for a week later.

That's what pushed me to set up Chhoto URL and run it on tinyurl.quantumnet.space.

At first, it felt like one of those "nice to have" projects. A bit of polish. A small convenience. But after using it for a while, it's become one of those little services that quietly earns its place in the rack.

Why I wanted it

In a homelab, links get messy fast.

You start with a couple of dashboards. Then you add a few services. Then a couple more. Before long, you've got URLs pointing to admin panels, internal tools, documentation pages, service endpoints, and random one-off things you swear you'll organise properly later.

You can absolutely survive without a URL shortener. I did for a long time. But once you have one, it makes things feel a lot tidier.

Instead of digging through bookmarks or copying around long addresses, I can just create something memorable and move on. It's faster, cleaner, and honestly just feels better.

Why Chhoto URL

I didn't want a bloated link platform with marketing features, user accounts everywhere, tracking junk, or a giant pile of options I'd never touch. I wanted something small, self-hosted, and fast.

That's what made Chhoto URL appealing to me in the first place. It's built around the idea of being simple and lightweight rather than trying to become a whole SaaS platform. It supports the things that actually matter for a setup like mine: custom short links, optional expiry, QR codes, a clean UI, and basic hit counting without turning into a surveillance machine.

That's exactly the sort of thing I like in a homelab service. Do one job, do it well, and don't waste resources.

How I use it

For me, tinyurl.quantumnet.space is less about public link sharing and more about making the homelab easier to live with.

I use it for things like:

• internal dashboards
• service login pages
• documentation links
• quick shortcuts to panels I access often
• links I want to send between devices without dealing with the full original URL

It's especially handy when I'm jumping between machines or doing something from my phone and I just want a short, obvious link instead of trying to remember some long path or subdomain.

It also helps make the lab feel a bit more "finished". That might sound silly, but small touches like this make self-hosted services feel less like a pile of containers and more like an actual environment you've built for yourself.

The install experience

The nice thing about Chhoto URL is that it doesn't try to be complicated. That was a big part of the appeal.

I deployed it in Docker, put it behind my usual setup, and pointed tinyurl.quantumnet.space at it. That was pretty much it. No drama, no heavyweight dependencies, no wrestling with a massive stack just to shorten a link. Chhoto URL ships with Docker support and a provided compose file, which makes it a very straightforward fit for a homelab deployment.

That's the kind of project I appreciate more and more these days. Especially in a lab where you already have enough other things competing for attention.

What I like most

The best self-hosted tools are usually the ones that disappear into the background.

That's been my experience here. I don't really "manage" this service. I just use it.

It's quick, lightweight, and gives me exactly what I want: a simple place to create short links under my own domain. No nonsense, no third-party dependency, no wondering whether some external service is going to rate-limit me, shut down, or decide it wants to layer in ten features I never asked for.

And because it lives under my own domain, it fits naturally with the rest of what I run. That matters to me. I like services that feel like part of the same ecosystem rather than borrowed tools I'm temporarily relying on.

Not every homelab project has to be ambitious.

Sometimes the most useful additions are the small ones. The things that save a few seconds here, remove a bit of friction there, and make the whole setup feel cleaner over time.

That's what tinyurl.quantumnet.space has been for me.

It's a tiny service, but it solves a real annoyance, and it does it without fuss. In homelab terms, that's usually a sign that something is worth keeping.

If you're the kind of person who self-hosts half your life and ends up surrounded by bookmarks, dashboards, and internal tools, a simple shortener like this makes a lot more sense than it might seem at first.

Sometimes a small URL really is all you need.