12/17/2007 22:40

833 Upgrading from Foxmarks 1.0 to Foxmarks 2.0 when Running your Own FTP Server

For users of the Foxmarks 1.0.1 plugin for Firefox who had Foxmarks set to use their own FTP server, here's an explanation of how to migrate and re-synchronize your bookmarks after upgrading to Foxmarks 2.x. I remember years ago having the toughest time keeping my bookmarks synchronized across PCs. I'd find something really great at home, then be unable to recall that bookmark from work, or vice versa. Some time ago, that trouble came to an end when I stumbled upon the great Foxmarks add-on for Firefox. Foxmarks lets you store your bookmarks in a central location, allowing you to synchronize all of your computers to the same master list of favorites. Any edits you make on one machine are automatically downloaded to the others. It's really been a godsend for me. One of the features that got me hooked on Foxmarks is that it supports FTP. While the default installation sets you up with an account on the Foxmarks website, the plugin also allows you to specify an alternate server of your choosing. So instead of trusting Foxmarks - the company - not to lose my bookmarks, I could set my own FTP server to be the central repository, knowing that everything there is properly backed up. Plus, by tracking my own favorites, I wouldn't be leaking to some random company how many Stickam URLs I was bookmarking. Tres bien. I'd been running this way for more than a year, when suddenly, today I was prompted to download a Foxmarks update. Nothing too unusual there, so I allowed the upgrade. I wound up with version 2.0.34, and apparently things have changed. Bigtime. The differences were so great that in order to get Foxmarks 2 configured properly, I had to fire up a packet sniffer and see exactly what was transpiring. By detailing the changes, maybe I can save you the trouble. Versions of Foxmarks prior to 2.0, which I'd been running for a long time, had a familiar settings dialog that was mostly unchanged from the original version I installed. In order to set up Foxmarks to use your own FTP server, you would tweak both tabs in the settings dialog like so: In the above example, the following assumptions are made: I'm hosting my own FTP server at shaunc.com, my username there is shaun, and I wanted Foxmarks to write its foxmarks.xml file into the ~/foxmarks/ directory inside of my home directory. That translates to /home/shaun/foxmarks/ on the server, but the path I chose is really irrelevant; all I'm trying to indicate is that where you see /foxmarks/ as the directory, it was expanded to /whatever/my/homedir/is/foxmarks/ by the plugin. Foxmarks would automatically write to and synchronize from a file named foxmarks.xml in that directory. Foxmarks 2.0.34 has a different way of interpreting the same settings. Here, we'll walk through setting it up. The first thing you want to do is decline the Foxmarks upgrade offer if it appears. Locate and backup your existing foxmarks.xml file (preferably to several disparate locations), in case anything goes wrong with the upgrade process. Make sure the machine you're working from has a synchronized and up-to-date version of all of your bookmarks. Then, accept the download of the Foxmarks 2.x plugin (or trigger it manually via Tools > Add-ons > Find Updates) and prepare to reconfigure. Using the above example, here is how I'd set Foxmarks 2.x to use the same directory that Foxmarks 1.0.1 was using: The first thing to note is that while the primary settings are the same, the advanced option to choose between FTP / HTTP / HTTPS has disappeared. (Foxmarks is apparently discouraging FTP, and while it's still supported, they say it will be less supported in the future.) If you're running your own FTP server where Foxmarks 2 should write its bookmarks, you now need to specify the protocol, username, hostname, directory path, and filename, all in the URL. The format is: ftp://username@hostname/path/foxmarks.xml As in earlier versions of Foxmarks, the plugin will use the password that you defined on the main settings tab when logging in to your FTP server. The username you specify on the main settings tab should match the username given in the URL on the advanced tab. When you select the advanced "Use own server" option, Foxmarks will bypass authentication to the official Foxmarks server, and will attempt to use your private FTP server instead. Once you've installed Foxmarks 2.x on one copy of Firefox, the "Synchronize Now" option will not work initially, because the foxmarks.xml file format has changed. You will need to force an overwrite of the remote bookmarks (Tools > Foxmarks > Settings > Advanced > Upload), then install the upgraded Foxmarks on your other copies of Firefox and set their settings to match. You should now be up and synchronizing again.