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Introducing Hkrn.ws

Hkrn.ws is a URL shortener for hacker news.

Paul Biggar

• 1 min read
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Introducing Hkrn.ws

Hkrn.ws is a URL shortener for hacker news.

Basically, it turns hkrn.ws/12303075 into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12303075.

I built this for a simpler time, when twitter charged you by the character for URLs. Today, I think the main value is having beautiful URLs. There is a ton of accidental complexity in the current Hacker News URL structure, and it hurts my eyes to look at it. I hope you’ll find it useful.

For a super simple site, it has — I think — a super interesting tech stack.

How it works

It turns:

Or more specifically, it 302 redirects URLs with these patterns:

  • hkrn.ws/(\d+) -> news.ycombinator.com/item?id=$1
  • hkrn.ws/u/(.*) -> news.ycombinator.com/user?id=$1
  • hkrn.ws/.* -> news.ycombinator.com/$1

Done

A simple project with a cool “making-of”. I hope you’ll find it useful.