kit·intermediate·updated 2026-07-13

LinkForge – Smart Link Management Kit

Shorten, organize, and share every link — self-hosted.

ReactGoTailwindCSS

A self-hosted link management platform — shorten URLs, organize them into collections, share publicly or with your team, and track click stats, all from a single React + Go app you run yourself.

Install

~60 seconds

terminal

bash

git clone https://github.com/yashthakur1/LinkForge.git linkforge
cd linkforge
docker-compose up -d

~/ what's inside

Already wired, so you can skip to features.

Custom short links

Shorten URLs with your own custom slugs instead of random strings.

Collections & organization

Group related links into collections instead of one long flat list.

Public & team sharing

Share individual links or whole collections publicly, or keep them scoped to your team.

Click & usage stats

See how many times each link was opened, without wiring up a separate analytics tool.

~/ the stack behind it

Every dependency has a reason.

React + TypeScript
Frontend UI built with Vite and styled with TailwindCSS.
Go
Single compiled backend binary — serves the API and, in production, the built frontend too.
SQLite / PostgreSQL
SQLite for zero-config single-file storage, or Postgres for a managed multi-user deployment.
Docker Compose
One-command deployment that wires the backend, frontend, and database together.

~/ environment

Here's every env var, labeled.

Copy to .env.local. The included first-run script refuses to boot if any of them are missing — you'll know immediately.

.env.example

dotenv

LINKFORGE_MODE=prod
LINKFORGE_PORT=5231
LINKFORGE_DATA=./data
LINKFORGE_DRIVER=sqlite
LINKFORGE_DSN=./data/linkforge.db

~/ walkthrough

Zero to first deploy.

This is the exact sequence we'd run from a blank directory. Steps are reproducible — if one fails, we want to know.

1. Run it with Docker (recommended)
Clone the repo and bring up the bundled docker-compose.yml — it builds the frontend and backend together and persists data to a local volume.
```
docker-compose up -d
```
2. Or run frontend and backend separately
No Docker? Install the frontend dependencies with pnpm and start the Vite dev server in one terminal, then run the Go backend in a second.
```
# Terminal 1 — frontend
cd frontend/web && pnpm install && pnpm dev

# Terminal 2 — backend
go run ./bin/slash/main.go --mode dev --port 8082
```

3. Build for production

Build the frontend, copy the static output into the backend's route directory, then compile a single Go binary that serves both.

cd frontend/web && pnpm build
cp -r dist ../../server/route/frontend/
go build -o ./build/linkforge ./bin/slash/main.go
./build/linkforge --mode prod

~/ known gotchas

The stuff that ate our afternoons.

Things we'd have wanted a heads-up on. Logged as we hit them.

!The dev frontend (Vite) and backend run on different ports — hitting the wrong one locally is the most common 'nothing loads' issue.
!Production mode expects the frontend's built dist/ folder already copied into server/route/frontend/ — skip that step and the Go binary serves a 404 for the UI.
!SQLite is the default driver; switch LINKFORGE_DRIVER to postgres and set LINKFORGE_DSN to a connection string for multi-user/production use.

when not

If you just need a single quick redirect link, this is overkill — collections, sharing, and stats add real setup (frontend build + Go binary + a database) for something a free URL shortener does in one click. This kit is for teams who want to own their link data.

license: Not specified — the source repo ships no LICENSE file. Confirm terms with the author before redistributing.·star on github →

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