Plugnova Link Shortener & QR

Plugnova Link Shortener & QR is a complete link shortener for WordPress. Instead of paying a monthly fee to a hosted URL shortener service, you shorten links on your own domain, keep every click in your own database, and hand nothing to a third party.

Create short, branded links such as yoursite.com/go/offer in seconds. Every short link can automatically generate a customizable QR code, and every click is recorded with the detail you would expect from a paid link shortener: device, browser, operating system, referrer and UTM parameters — all stored locally, with no external visitor tracking.

Why use a self-hosted link shortener?

• Your brand, not theirs — links read yoursite.com/go/offer instead of a generic shortener domain.
• No monthly fee and no link limits — create as many short links as you need.
• You own the data — link and analytics data live in your own WordPress database.
• Nothing disappears — hosted shorteners expire links and lock analytics behind upgrades; your links last as long as your site does.
• Privacy by default — visitor IP addresses are never stored, and no per-visitor request leaves your server.
• Affiliate-friendly — manage affiliate links, track campaigns and monitor destination health.
• Bio Link pages included — build link-in-bio pages on your own site, no extra service needed.

Link shortening & QR codes

• Unlimited short links with random or custom slugs
• Automatic QR code generation (PNG or SVG) with square/rounded/circle styles, custom colors, and an optional brand-logo band
• Optional caption text baked directly into the QR image (e.g. “Check Price on Amazon”) — ideal for videos and thumbnails
• Multi-destination URL rotation (Round Robin, Random, or Weighted Random) with per-destination analytics and an optional fallback URL
• 301 / 302 / 307 redirect types
• Password-protected links, expiration dates, and click limits
• Geo (country) and device targeting rules — send visitors to different URLs based on where they are or what they’re using
• Quick Add: paste a URL and press Enter to create a link instantly
• Bulk actions: enable/disable, trash/restore/delete, regenerate QR, set category, add tag, export selected
• Filters by status, category, tag, color label, favorite, link health, and creation date
• Broken-link checker with a Smart Link Score — on-demand always, and on an optional, off-by-default daily schedule (see “External services” below)

Smart Bio Link pages

• Link-in-bio landing pages at your own domain (/bio/your-name)
• Drag-and-drop buttons, product-card buttons (image + text), link groups (accordions), and a social-icon row
• Announcement bar, countdown timer, floating contact buttons, campaign scheduling, and per-button country/device visibility
• Optional email-capture gate and password protection
• Ready-made templates, one-click import/export, and a live preview while editing
• Per-page and per-button analytics

Analytics & tracking

• Real-time click/view analytics: device, browser, OS, referrer (categorized), and UTM breakdowns, with a date-range picker and optional bot inclusion
• QR-scan vs. direct-traffic split
• Offline GeoIP country detection — visitor IPs never leave your server
• Bot/crawler filtering — link-preview and search-engine bots are excluded from counts
• Unique and bot-filtered click counts
• CSV export of links and of analytics

Affiliate & content tools

Plugnova Link Shortener & QR is built for affiliate marketers, content creators, bloggers and publishers.

• Keyword auto-linking — automatically link chosen keywords in your post content
• Short, branded affiliate URLs with click and campaign analytics
• QR codes for affiliate campaigns, print material and video thumbnails
• UTM parameter tracking and broken-destination checking
• Bulk CSV import and migration from Pretty Links / ThirstyAffiliates

Developer tools

• Full REST API (/wp-json/qlqr/v1/) secured with capability checks and rate limiting
• Shortcodes: [qlqr], [qlqr_qr], [qlqr_button], [qlqr_stats], [qlqr_bio], [qlqr_bio_qr]
• Activity Log audit trail, Database Repair Tool, and a System Health checker

Privacy

• IP addresses are never stored — only a salted, one-way SHA-256 hash
• No per-visitor external requests; all redirects, QR generation, and geolocation happen on your own server
• Clean uninstall routine with opt-in data removal

External services

This plugin relies on three external services, detailed below.

Freemius (licensing and update SDK)

This plugin uses the Freemius SDK to manage plugin updates, licensing for the premium version,
and (only if you opt in) anonymous usage data used to improve the plugin and offer support.

On activation, an administrator is shown a one-time opt-in screen asking permission to connect the
site to Freemius. Connecting sends non-sensitive data such as this site’s URL, admin email, WordPress
and PHP versions, and this plugin’s version — never post content, visitor data, or link/analytics data
stored by this plugin. An administrator may skip connecting; the plugin remains fully usable, and
Freemius still performs basic update checks for the plugin itself.

• Service: Freemius, https://freemius.com/
• Terms of use: https://freemius.com/terms/
• Privacy policy: https://freemius.com/privacy/

GeoIP country dataset (npm registry)

This service is used to power the optional, offline “Top Countries” analytics report. The plugin
downloads a public IP-to-country dataset once and looks up visitor countries locally afterwards —
no per-visitor lookup is ever sent anywhere.

This service is called only when a site administrator clicks “Download / Update Database” on the
Settings screen. It is never called automatically, on a schedule, or in response to a visitor. If
that button is never clicked, this plugin makes no request to this service at all, and the Top
Countries report simply stays empty.

What is sent: a plain package-download request for the @ip-location-db/asn-country package —
no visitor data, IP address, or site data of any kind.

The dataset itself is released into the public domain (CC0) by the ip-location-db project:
https://github.com/sapics/ip-location-db

• Service: npm registry, https://registry.npmjs.org/
• Terms of use: https://docs.npmjs.com/policies/terms
• Privacy policy: https://docs.npmjs.com/policies/privacy

Link destination check (broken-link checker)

This service check is used to tell you whether a short link’s own destination is still online. The
“destination” is whichever URL you yourself configured as a link’s target when creating it — this
plugin does not call any single fixed third-party service for this feature, but rather whatever
destination URLs you have added.

This is off by default. It is called only when a site administrator either clicks “Check All Links”
on the Links screen (a one-time, on-demand check), or turns on “Automatically check for broken
links” on the Settings screen (a daily scheduled check, which can be turned off again at any time).
It is never called automatically before that setting is turned on, and never in response to a visitor.

What is sent: a standard HTTP GET request to the destination URL, with a generic User-Agent string
identifying the plugin (no site-identifying information, such as this site’s own URL, is included).
No visitor data is ever sent.

If the setting is never turned on and “Check All Links” is never clicked, this plugin makes no such
request at all.

If you never click that button and never turn the setting on, the plugin makes no such requests at all.

Support

For bug reports, questions and feature requests, please use the
support forum for this plugin on WordPress.org.