Personally, one of my favourite things….. I use it a lot and it’s proving to be the most useful way of keeping, organising and sharing links. Even though I know that it’s an easy and straight forward site and service to use – it can be a bit tricky if you are not that familiar with it – or trying it out for the very first time. So people do ask me a lot on how this exactly works and what the best way would be to start using this – so I thought I put together a little list – hoping to spread the word…

Before we start – make sure you are using Firefox. Hopefully you are doing so already – as it is one of the best browsers out there. As a webdesigner Firefox should definitely be your chosen browser as there are so many useful extensions available » mozilla.org/extensions.

Let’s start using del.icio.us

SIGNUP

1. go to del.icio.us and sign up
   NOTE:
   You will be asked to provide your email address and will need to activate your account via a confirmation email.
   
2. once your account has been created – you will be able to install the extensions for Firefox which make using del.icio.us so easy and convenient.
   Install the 2 buttons – and start using them immediately…
   If you ever want to stop using del.icio.us and get rid of the Firefox buttons – you can simply go to the extensions manager within Firefox [top menu > tools > extensions] and uninstall them.
   
   There are now also ‘bookmarklets’ available – these are small buttons you can add to your bookmarks bar.
3. Once your buttons are installed – have a look at the quick button tutorial page and read through the comments.
   The square del.icio.us icon is simply a shortcut to your online bookmark archive, ie your page on the del.icio.us website. The ‘TAG’ button is your shortcut to save any page you are currently viewing to your del.icio.us bookmarks.
4. By now you should have received your email and activated your account by clicking on the link within the email. Access your page by typing “http://del.icio.us/your-username” and you will see you page as shown below.
   
   The page is broken down into 2 main menu areas – the top left which allows you to view your bookmarks, your networked links and post and share links, more in detail later. The right hand side contains links to your account and its configuration as well as your link archive and its viewing and organisation options. I won’t go into detail about those as they are pretty self-explanatory

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SAVING YOUR FIRST BOOKMARK

1. with your buttons installed and in Firefox – go to one of your favourite websites
2. click on the ‘TAG’ button in order to save the currently open page to your bookmarks – a new pop up window will open, allowing you to add notes and tags.
   
   TIP
   if you highlight a small section of text within the page – this will be used as input text for the ‘notes’ text box.
3. as you can see the URL has been added already as well as the page title being shown as description. The ‘notes’ textbox is optional but a good idea to use as you might not exactly remember why you saved a specific link. It will be good practice to always add some notes – even if it’s only a few words…
   TAGS
   You can think of tags as labels or categories you can set up to keep your collection of links organised and easier to access. You can start setting up tags as you go along and simply come up with suitable keywords as you start saving your bookmarks. Initially this might seem a little confusing but you will soon get used to it and the more links you save – the more useful you will find this system.
   You can edit the names of your tags at any point – and also organise your tags further into groups called ‘bundles’. Once you ‘tag’ a webpage – del.icio.us will suggest commonly used tags you might want to start using yourself. You can use one or more tags for each bookmark, a system you will keep adding to and changing as you use it.
4. click ’save’ – and you’re done…
   You can now return to your main del.icio.us page and on page refresh you will see your saved link. On the screenshot below you can see that 3 links have been saved to the bookmarks, each ‘tagged’ with suitable names.
   
   On the left hand side you can see the added links. Each link consists of a title (= description), the notes and the tags you have assigned. Next to the title you can see 2 links which will allow you to edit or delete your bookmark at any time (you will need to be logged in for this).
   You can also see how many other people on del.icio.us have saved this page as bookmark – and the date when it was saved.
   
   On the right hand side you can see your newly created tags as well as your viewing options. Please see the list below for further details:
   
   • tags
     your existing tags, displayed according to the options selected below
   • tag display
     you can select to view all your tags in a list or view them as ‘cloud’ which will show them as block of text, in either case the tags will be organised as chosen in the next option
   • tag ordering
     you how the tags will be ordered – either alphabetically or by the amount of links the tag contains, ie the more links it contains the higher in the list it will appear
   • once you have saved several tags – you can set up tag bundles and organise you tags into categories – this option will allow you to show and hide those bundles
   • tag content
     select how many links a tag should contain before being displayed in your tag listing
   • tag arrangement
     this link will take you to a new page where you can set up and arrange yoru tags into bundles (as menitoned above)

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DAY-TO-DAY

Now you should be set up and ready to go… I found it best to simply start using del.icio.us the same way as I was doing before with my own bookmarks – and not worry about ‘getting it right’, as it were. As it is easy to edit any of the settings, tag and bundle names at any point – it soon becomes an easy and useful method, much more flexible than your browser’s bookmarks.

Once you have used del.icio.us for a while you might find it useful to set up categories for your tags which will make it easier for you to find your way around your now growing collection of links. Let’s assume you have saved links with the following tags: webdesign, css, gallery, articles, flash, inspiration, design, magazine, php, portfolio and tutorials. To organise these into bundles – click onto ‘arrange tags’.

In our given case – we have tags with different kind of content, some purely for viewing and some with resources and tutorials – so we can now set up bundles to contain links to similar kind of content.

To create a new bundle – simply type in your chosen name and click create. You can then add the appropriate tags to the bundle by clicking on them – remember to click ’save’ once you are finished. As you can see on the left hand side – you can rename your bundles at any time.

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SHARING LINKS

One of the great feature of del.icio.us is not only the ability to view popluar tags saved by others but also to be able to share your links with anyone else using it. All you need to know is your friend’s username which you will need to type in the first time – but which you can simply select from your tags list any time after that.

In order to send someone a link – you simply use the tag textbox and type in “for:” + the username of your friend, without any spaces – please see the highlighted section above. This will then be saved alongside your other tags and appear on the page as shown here:

If someone has saved a link for your – you will find it in the ‘links for you’ section – the example below shows a link which was saved for me.

After a while of using this – both your link collection and your list of friends will grow and your del.icio.us page will become a good resource for any sort of content you like looking at. Whenever you add or edit a link – you will see you existing tags which you can add by simply clicking on them, see the screenshot of my page below.

Well, that should cover the basics ;) Have fun and don’t forget to send me a link or two ;)

You might want to start by having a look at my del.icio.us page: http://del.icio.us/eyedea

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