A Del.icio.us Guide

Del.icio.us is an online social bookmarking service that is in development, but available for anyone to use in Beta (test) version. The site provides all the information you need to know (here), but for the new user who is not familiar with social bookmarking this post will enable you to understand how to view the links, how to search using tags, and how to search by user. It is very easy to use and once you understand these basics you'll want to open an account and start contributing bookmarks.

This guide is being written for readers of News Over Coffee, so I'm going to use NewsOverCoffee's del.icio.us for my examples.

What you're looking at when you go to del.icio.us:

• Top of Page: Next to the del.icio.us name, is the name of the user account you are viewing (in this case Newsovercoffee). To the right of the name, still at the top, are del.icio.us site buttons: login, register, about, and popular. When you have an account and log-in the page structure changes slightly and immediately below the names is a search box, and to the right the del.icio.us site "buttons" are changed to: bookmarks, inbox, post, settings, logout, about, and popular.
  
• Right Column: "Tags" These are the tags used within a single user's account (in this case News Over Coffee's). Tags are one word descriptors attached to a link. The number to the left of the tag is the number of links related to this tag. More than one tag is often used for each link to improve its ability to be found through searches. There is no right or wrong way to tag and what seems right in one context, may not in another. To read more about this visit Folksonomy. At the bottom of the list are several viewing options identifying: cloud, frequency, and hide.
  
• Bottom of Page: There are additional del.icio.us links at the bottom of the page identifying: home page, about, blog, terms of service, privacy policy, copyright policy, and contact us.
  
• Left Column/Body: Two-thirds of the left side of the page lists links (referred to as bookmarks) that have been added by the user to their account (again in this case News Over Coffee's). Each bookmark includes a Title (if you click on the title it will take you to the web site it refers to), Tags (descriptors used for each title), and the date it was added (posted) to the account. You may also find an optional description added by the user under the title, and if another del.icio.us user has added the same link it between the tags and the date you will see a count of how many users have posted this link.
  

Finding Links of Interest

NewsOverCoffee's del.icio.us is structured as a Community Directory. As a Community Directory, I've created a set of tags that include: Geography (Nazareth, Stockertown, Tatamy, UpperNazareth, LowerNazareth, and Bushkill), Function (Business, Education, Government, History, Hobby, Information, Library, Music, News, Organization, Recreation, Religion, Sports, Student-Activities, and Transportation) , and Type (all the subs of the Function entries such as: FlowerShop, Instruments, Knitting, Moravian, NASD, etc.).

Please note: All tags must be a single word. When two words are required, such as "Lower Nazareth", I've added the tag as one word with a capital beginning each of the original words: "LowerNazareth"

You can begin to find links by clicking on the tags and viewing the links that appear, but the more links there are in an account, the more you are going to want to narrow your search.

If you want to view all the links that are tagged with "LowerNazareth", go to the right sidebar and click on "LowerNazareth".

You will now see a new column "related tags" has been inserted to the left of the far right "tag" column sidebar. These related tags are links that have "LowerNazareth" and the related "tag" included.

If you click on a "related tag" you will get all of the entries of the related tag, not those with both LowerNazareth and the related tag.

To view LowerNazareth and the related tag you need to go to the URL window on your browser (where it now reads: http://del.icio.us/NewsOverCoffee/LowerNazareth) and place your cursor at the end of LowerNazareth.

Type with no spaces: +Education

Hit Go or Enter

The URL now reads: http://del.icio.us/NewsOverCoffee/LowerNazareth+Education

It shows you the links that include both LowerNazareth and Education, and a new set of related tags appears. The list of related tags are those links that have both LowerNazareth and Education and the related link.

To see all three entries, go to the URL, click in the box, go to the end of Education, add a "+" sign, and the new related tag.

You will now see the links with all three entries and the new related fields.

If you choose to click on the bottom link in related tags "from all users" you will get a list of all bookmarks submitted by all account users in del.icio.us. This is a great way to find new sights in an area you are interested in, but you will need to remember that different people have different concepts of a tag when applying it, and you may see some results you were not expecting.

If you go to your URL you can always enter: http://del.icio.us/tag/ and then a tag or two or three you are interested in separating each by "+" signs with no spaces and hit enter. The word tag tells del.icio.us you are searching for all user posted bookmarks containing each tag listed.

For example: http://del.icio.us/tag/moravian+Nazareth


When you find sights that are very good, take note of the User Name. You can view all the user's links once you know their account name by typing: http://del.icio.us/newsovercoffee