Keep, share, and discover the best of the Web using Delicious, the world’s leading social bookmarking service.
I was planning on creating a “Favorites” page where I listed out my favorite sites for tools, social networking, html, etc. But then I started thinking that maybe del.icio.us was the way to go. Easier to create and maintain and … something that I should be using anyway, so I spent some time this morning setting it up and getting familiar with the process. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
After signing up, you have the option to install their special bookmarking app. I added this and got a links on my toolbar to the del.icio.us homepage and bookmarks and a quick way to add a webpage to my bookmarks. It looks like the app was written by Yahoo! so their “special” toolbar shows up too. I turned that off, I’m very particular about how much “junk” shows up at the top of my browser window.
Step 2: Import your existing bookmarks
It then asks if you want to import your bookmarks. You get two options:
- Easy Import: Automatically import your old bookmarks (recommended)
- Custom import: choose your import settings
I choose custom import because I didn’t want it to mass-import all my bookmarks (control issues – see above) but it brought them all over anyway. Over 500 bookmarks! Lots of games from my daughter, recipes, junk sites that I don’t need access to all the time. The only way to delete them is in batches of 10 … which would have taken all day. So I deleted my account and started over.
The system let me use the same username that I just deleted (thankfully) and this time I picked “Skip Step 2” … I’ll add my own bookmarks in manually this time.
If you’re new to del.icio.us, start with the link “How do I get started” … where you’ll find some information about how to get started and some basic definitions. There’s a help section also that looks pretty detailed, but I haven’t spent much time in there. I’m basically a “play-around-and-figure-it-out” type. Then after a few days I’ll check out the help section. That’s how I learn, if you prefer reading, then head over there now and start reading.
Since I’m not importing my bookmarks, it might take some time to get everything added that I want on there, but I think it will be faster than importing them all and then deleting all the extraneous stuff. (You also have the option of ‘public’ and ‘private’ bookmarks. Maybe you don’t want the rest of the world knowing you’re fan of the TV show “Charmed,” for instance, you can make that one private!)
Adding bookmarks is very easy. Open the webpage you want to bookmark, click on the “Tag” button in the toolbar (the one that looks like an old fashioned clothing store tag) add your notes and your tag words and you’re done!
Add Tags: After you’ve added your bookmarks, you’ll be able to click on a ‘tag’ from your bookmarks page and see all the sites you’ve tagged with that category. del.icio.us makes it easy for you to add these. Under “Recommended Tags” and “Popular Tags” click on the words you’d like to use or if you don’t see what you want, you can type your own words in the space provided.
Add Notes. Put something descriptive here. You can copy the first line or two of text from the website or you can make up your own words but make it something that will help you remeber what the site is. Later when you open up the bookmarks, the “notes” will remind you what the site is and why you bookmarked it.
After you’ve added a few bookmarks, click on the “Bookmark” link at the top of the page. You’ll see your list that you can sort alphabetically or by most recent. At the right you’ll see your tags (you can choose to view the top 10 or all). Click on a few to see if the sites you expected to find there are actually there. You might have to make a few adjustments to how you’re tagging your sites. Doing it now when you only have a few to edit will be much easier and faster than if you wait until you have 100 or more bookmarks.
For example. You don’t have to use a comma between your tag words. If you do, it becomes part of the word! I had ‘tools’ and ‘tools,’ as tag words. I just went back and edited those bookmarks where I used commas. If I had waited until I was all done, that could have take hours and I probably wouldn’t have done it.
There’s some helpful tools within del.icio.us: I can create a public profile, add RSS feeds and send and receive links from friends. Much cleaner and easier than emailing the URL’s to myself (or others) and then having to remember to open the email, go to the site and bookmark it. Now all my important bookmarks will be available to me where ever I am.
How is this helpful? I can see using del.icio.us the following ways:
- A Bookmark Repository. I work at home, at my clients offices and at my clients homes. Having one central location for my important bookmarks will help me stay organized. Currently I email them to myself and put them in a “resource” folder in my email, not very efficient.
- Sharing with Friends (ex: Favorite Restaurants, Parks, Activities)
- Sharing with Clients (ex: Social Networking Tools, Blogs)
- Organizing by Subject (ex: Summer in Seattle, Blogs, Articles)
- Driving Traffic to My Blog
I’ll add more later about sending/receiving bookmarks, adding a network and how I can incorporate this into my blog. There’s a “del.icio.us” widget available through wordpress that I’ve added … you’ll find it in the right hand column towards the top of this page. I was able to choose how many bookmarks I wanted to include and what tags (if any) I wanted to show. I’m sure I’ll be tweeking this through out the week!
