Organizing bookmarks?

[helgi]

I was wondering if anyone had advice to give regarding browser bookmarks?

If I'm to pin-point what my problem is, I think it's just that I lack a system with clear categorization, and a way of dealing with bookmarks I haven't visited in a while but don't feel like I can delete outright. Or maybe even a way of clarifying my reasons behind bookmarking something in the first place.

When I add a bookmark, I tend to stick it in a folder I call 'current' that has sub-folders like 'reading,' 'audio/video' etc., that I keep alongside the more clearly categorized ones. The reason I do this is because I don't want to lose them in the piles of stuff I have in the others.

Maybe some GTD related system?

[linkerjpatrick]

I made a big point about 6 months ago or organizing my bookmarks into specific areas

1.) News and Local Information

2.) Business

3.) Personal

within those I added the subcategories that a relevant to me. During the week when I find new bookmarks I don't organize them right away but keep them in the default section for review, future organization or deletion if I only needed the bookmark for a short time.

My business has a 4 tiered work flow of Develop, Organize, Secure and Share so I made those into subcategories within the different services of Web and Print Development under my business bookmarks.

Several subcategories in my personal section are Christianity, Personal Development, Entertainment and Education.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by helgi

I was wondering if anyone had advice to give regarding browser bookmarks?

If I'm to pin-point what my problem is, I think it's just that I lack a system with clear categorization, and a way of dealing with bookmarks I haven't visited in a while but don't feel like I can delete outright. Or maybe even a way of clarifying my reasons behind bookmarking something in the first place.

When I add a bookmark, I tend to stick it in a folder I call 'current' that has sub-folders like 'reading,' 'audio/video' etc., that I keep alongside the more clearly categorized ones. The reason I do this is because I don't want to lose them in the piles of stuff I have in the others.

Maybe some GTD related system?

Hi Helgi

Good point. I have the same mess!

I think it would be best to categorise into broad groups then sub groups.

Like Bookmarks - Sport - Football etc

or

Bookmarks - Forums - Steve Pavina
Bookmarks - Forums - Anthony Robbins

etc etc


Good thinking. I wll get that done this weekend.

[stalker]

I use delicious (del.icio.us) and it works pretty well.

[micth]

i read this topic and was like... y do u need to organise bookmarks? if you need to save ur spot in a book, there's usually one lying around somewhere ...

anywayz, i use delicious aswell

[jpfieber]

I use Google Bookmarks. One of the benefits of Google Bookmarks, or a system like Del.icio.us is that they are tag based, so you can put a bookmark in more than just one 'folder'. In the standard folder based structure their are a lot of links that just don't fit cleanly in one specific category.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by jpfieber

I use Google Bookmarks. One of the benefits of Google Bookmarks, or a system like Del.icio.us is that they are tag based, so you can put a bookmark in more than just one 'folder'. In the standard folder based structure their are a lot of links that just don't fit cleanly in one specific category.

OH! I didnt realise there was 'Google bookmarks'!!!

I will get onto that today! I use gmail, so why not.

[Ilya]

I used to be a bookmark junkie - I would bookmark any site I thought is worthwhile; my bookmarks folders were huge and chaotic. But then I've realized that it is faster just to google the site again, then to find it in the depth of bookmark folder. With search history, it has become even easier. I also use Firefox and 99 percent of the sites i need to go back to are stored in the history and are autosuggested. So I hardly use bookmarks in their original sence anymore.

[Sunnett]

My biggest problem with my bookmarks is that I save tons of links while surfing and never really explore them more or I just forget about them. After a while I'm left with a bunch of bookmarks not organized well and even not explored more like i intended.

So I thought a good idea would be to make a wait folder where you would put every link that you find interesting while surfing for later review. Then you set a special amount of time every week to go through all those links and explore them and decide if they are good for not deleting them.

On the folder issue maybe the best thing is to make just a few folders that will represent you current ocupation, interests, like personal development, entertainment, sports... Everything else that you might find interesting but again not so important, put in a special ("other") folder with different subfolders.

[droren]

I have been using Del.icio.us engine since it has been statred.
It's really great site and I categorize my bookmarks using key words for fast searching, also my bookmarks are shared and visable in any place

[helgi]

I like to keep my bookmarks local, even though it doesn't really make any sense, so bookmarking services like del.icio.us and such weren't on my mind at all. But I might look into those now, particularly for ephemeral bookmarks like links to specific articles and so on.

I did a 4 hour cleaning session yesterday (70% done) where I put my old bookmark folder structure inside a temporary folder, went through each bookmark, building up a new folder structure on the side as I went along, and either found a place for it or threw it out. I've recently done a similar thing with my physical stuff, going through everything and getting rid of stuff I've been hoarding for years. Must've thrown out, sold or given away 50% of my 'stuff' in the past year or so, and it was a very similar thing with the bookmarks.

Organizing them was easy when I figured out my reasons for wanting to visit the sites in the first place: ended up creating four top-level folders called Pers, Work, School and Temporary, and then a set of standardized sub-folders going from general->specific.

Thanks for the responses everyone, it feels good to de-clutter

[ZenDude]

I also use del.icio.us, I transfered my 400+ bookmarks from Firefox to delicious in one swoop, no problems.

I also try to use tags sparingly, as too much tags clutters my bookmark collection.

[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).

[JKuehl]

until now i used FURL - but i had to add every single bookmark to it one-bookmark-at-a-time and the furling process needed about 15 seconds per bookmark, sometimes a minute as the site had to load... now i´m trying delicious and it is ALOT better! All Bookmarks i have in my firefox so far in one sweep - sweet!!

[pkarpiak]

I use del.icio.us for regular booksmarks and the bookmark widget in Netvibes for my blog/email related bookmarks. I also have the del.icio.us widget in my Netvibes and have those two widgets stacked in one column. I find it more elegant to browse my bookmarks and tags using Netvibes than using the del.icio.us page.

[transcendence]

I use scrapbook: ScrapBook - Firefox Extension

It allows you to save whole or parts of pages really easily and to annotate them as well. Can be used to bookmark as well.

Zotero also looks like it has potential: Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool

[Atom]

Wow, I've started using del.icio.us after reading this thread, and I really love it! The "social bookmarking" aspect is very cool.