[Bruce Achterberg]

I remember seeing a post over at lifehack.org the other day that you may be interested in. It was called Ask Readers: Tips on Organizing Bookmarks? and basically invited Lifehack visitors to leave a comment explaining how they manage their bookmarks.

To quote the post:

Our reader, Emre, has sent in a question on bookmark organization:

I have so many bookmarks in Firefox that it’s getting out of hand and becoming difficult to manage. I have done the best I can to organize my bookmarks using folders and sub-folders, but it isn’t enough. I always have those bookmarks that could fit into multiple categories. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I have tons of bookmarks that fit no where else but in my “Miscellaneous.”

Do you have any suggestions on how to organize bookmarks in Firefox? I am looking forward to hearing from you.

I've read through most of the comments to the article (there are 25 comments as of this writing), and the prevalent themes were:

• A lot of people really liked del.icio.us
• Quite a few people really liked Google Bookmarks
• Some people chose to use RSS feeds to scan headlines rather then book mark things
• Some people suggested that you should triage ruthlessly with your bookmark collection and get rid of those that you don't use
• Not many people seem to keep their bookmarks offline on their own computer (ie. they use things like del.icio.us and Google Bookmarks instead)

Personally, I keep my bookmarks stored offline in my FireFox 1.5 browser (I haven't upgraded to FireFox 2.0 because I've heard there are a few compatibility issues with some websites, so while 1.5 continue to work, I'll just use that for now). At first I tried to use the folder system, but after a while I just gave up and opted to use the search system instead. While I still put things in an appropriate file, that is largely for semantics because it the viewing options for the file system in FireFox are somewhat lacking.

Usually when I make a new bookmark I include the name of the website along with a short description (I hardly ever use the default bookmark text that is entered in by default, and if I do, I usually modify it and/or expand upon it). I try to include a few keywords in that description so I can use the FireFox search option to search for bookmarks. So generally, this is the format I use:

<website title> - <website description> - <key words that will make it easier to search for this particular entry>

Now say, for example, I wanted to bookmark Steve's website. This is what it would look like:

StevePavlina.com - Personal Development for Smart People - Comprehensive range of articles, podcasts, and information about personal development, growth, and self help.

Note the fact that I used the word "comprehensive". I use this to differentiate notable websites from less-notable websites, so I could just do a search for "comprehensive" and have all of my notable website bookmarks show up.

I generally only use bookmarks to make sure I don't forget about a website that is particularly useful or interesting. For example, I wouldn't bookmark a website just because it has one good article. I would either scan the article for ideas and document them somewhere else on my computer or link to the file in a document (again, somewhere on my computer).

Or, for example, if a website had MANY good articles, I would bookmark it, and then scan the any particularly useful/interesting articles for ideas and document them somewhere. Generally when I scan something for ideas I like to turn those ideas into actionable steps, but occasionally I will store information for later reference.

Doing things this way cuts down on the amount of bookmarks I have to make, and makes it easy to find what I'm looking for. If I was looking for a particular bookmark I usually remember something about it that will enable me to find it using the FireFox search feature, but if that doesn't work for me, I'll just scan through the folder list for what I'm looking for. That's one of the reasons I still use folders - it gives you at least a bit of organisation.

How do I use folders?

Well, basically, I have a folder for each topic. For example, I may have a folder for Personal Development, Games, Health, Cooking, Business, Excercise/Training, and Internet Browser Applications (things that you can use in your browser without having to download anything, such as Google Maps or a currency converter tool). Within those "topic" folders I can break it down further and have more specific topics, but I only make those as needed. I also have a folder in certain "topic" folders where I place bookmarks that I'm not sure I want to keep but don't have time to look at the moment.

Other then that, I have a few bookmark buttons on the FireFox bookmark toolbar for websites that I visit very often (eg. I have a bookmark link to these forums, a link to Steve's website, a link to Google, a link to my ISP account, and a link to my email account).