I touched on bookmarks twice in previous posts. The first was with storing interesting stuff, and how I didn’t have a good system, which led to me trying out Raindrop.io, Shiori and Shaarli, Nextcloud Bookmarks, and then Logseq. I was happy with my Logseq setup, but later decided to switch my approach to a Link Garden. Which I was satisfied with, and I do like having a public repository of sorts for my bookmarks. However, I recently became reacquainted with linkding, and it’s got me thinking…

linkding

I had dabbled with linkding, a self hosted bookmark manager, as well as its contemporary LinkAce, for no more than a few minutes in the past before deciding it wasn’t for me.

Then I came across a post on Reddit where someone in the comments responded with how using the linkding injector was a game changer, as it means bookmarks don’t get forgotten. How?

“When searching on a search engine the search term is also sent to your linkding instance and results are added in a new box in the sidebar right to the search engine results.”

As such, a search for “contrast checker” will bring up search results, as well as a box to the side featuring any saved bookmarks which match that term too. Quite exciting! Furthermore, there is a way to configure HTTP Request Shortcuts on Android, to allow saving bookmarks easily on the go, complete with tagging too! Lastly, it’s also very easy to backup with buttons to easily export and import the bookmarks.

Initially, what I have done is clean up my clogged bookmark toolbar by adding and tagging them into linkding, but while this is nice, that’s where most of my temporary bookmarks were, not the ones I intended to keep in the long term.

Link Garden

Instead, the permanent links were in the Link Garden, created by organised Markdown files and deployed through MkDocs. But having them reappear alongside search results, as well as easy inputting via not only the Android shortcut, but also the web browser extension, plus being able to assign a link with multiple tags for quick searching, has made me rethink things.

As nice as the Link Garden is, I think it’s already going to enter an early retirement in favour of going full in on linkding as a bookmark manager. I’m going to start the process of gradually migrating my saved links within the Link Garden over, and then close it down.

A Side Note…

I cannot recall where I read this recently, but I came across someone online (probably on Mastodon), talking about how we need to be less curated when we talk online, in that we do not discuss failures and the journey of processing enough, instead focusing on the successes and the end results.

Although it is almost quite comical how many changes I have made to storing my bookmarks (been through Firefox, Raindrop, Nextcloud Bookmarks, Logseq, MkDocs, and now linkding), I think it’s important to document how people get to places and why. Although I have ended up making yet another change to improve my setup, others may find somewhere else along my journey was exactly what they wanted, and by showing my changes in thinking out loud in public, people are able to do this.

It’s also part of me overcoming issues with perfectionism. I’ve long had issues with hiding mistakes and having to be perfect, or else feeling like a failure. By being open about changing my mind, not getting it right first try, I am hoping will lead to a better mentality. I also agree with that person I read online that normalising talking about journeys, about what went wrong, and changing our minds is a positive thing for the internet as a whole. Life is messy, our thinking processes are messy, we shouldn’t pretend that they’re not!