Implemented Bookmark posts for future reference - Bookmark Center

[Grover]

I am a member of the biggest social networking site in The Netherlands and there you can bookmark someone. Normally when you want to be a friend of someone, you send a request to that person. This person can either grant or deny your request. But what if you are not interested to become a friend of someone at that point in time? You just want to bookmark a person because you find them interesting, and decide later maybe what to do with it.

I was also a member of a very popular dutch dating website and there you have 'Favorites'. You can browser through millions of Profiles and add the ones you like to your Favorite list. This Favorite list can be sorted subsequentially on different fields (try doing that with your browser favorites....).

Furthermore, I also often have the need to bookmark a thread or even just a single posting.

Ofcoure you can use your browser bookmarks. But it is much more handy to have a dedicated bookmark section (on your profile or wherever it fits best) really where you can manage those bookmarks to your likings. (We could even have privacy-options for it, so we can share our bookmarks with whoever we wish, but that may take things a bit too far... just keep it basic is my opinion).

You know the 'Favorites Center' in Internet Explorer? Simple and very useful... it would be great if we have something like that, so we can manage different kinds of Bookmarks, being it Profiles, Threads, Posts, or even Private Conversations... and in the future Blog entries/comments and CMS Articles/comments. Any content type really. Divided them into different subfolders and we are ready to go!

How many times on a sophisticated board like for example vBulletin you find yourself you need to reply to something, or see an interesting thread or posting or CMS article, or Profile and you think... I need to get back to this at some point. What to do? Most of the time I mail the URL of that content to myself...

It would be much better if we can do all this on the platform itself. What do you all think?

To the Moderators: this thread should be called 'Bookmark Center', because I am not talking about Favorites only here. Bookmarks fits the bill the best.

(edit: Maybe odd to say in my own thread , but this functionality is not one that is essential to me on a day-to-day basis. Just sometimes think it might come in handy).

Please do [like] this first posting if you think it is a good feature suggestion for XenForo

 

[Grover]

just add a "Bookmark" -link besides the already existing links "Report - Like - Reply".

I like the idea and see how it can be useful as I have fallen into the situations you mention often however this is probably best left as an addon IMO.

Maybe odd to say in my own thread , but this functionality is not one that is essential to me on a day-to-day basis. Just sometimes think it might come in handy. If you like my suggestion then please press [Like] in the first posting (as requested here ).

 

[Grover]

Here's another example where a bookmark tool can come in handy:

Im not sure how the Personal conversations work, ok well i know how they work just have yet to see them in action so this may be a stupid request. But id love the ability to mark important PM's (Check Mark, Star) Im sure this could be an easy hack but its standard email functionality.. So why not make it standard on xF Private Conversations?

 

[steven s]

A bookmark is a great idea. Much like on vb.org I can see mods I have tagged.

 

[Kim]

to bookmark a thread or even just a single posting.

Love this idea Grover! I know you can sort of do this by watching, but sometimes you don't want to see every reply in your news feed, it would be nice to be able to just bookmark a topic and go back to it when you are ready, not have new posts thrust upon you.

 

[Grover]

Love this idea Grover! I know you can sort of do this by watching, but sometimes you don't want to see every reply in your news feed, it would be nice to be able to just bookmark a topic and go back to it when you are ready, not have new posts thrust upon you.

Thanks, yes you've clearly explained the benefits of it indeed.

 

[Grover]

Evernote just introduced a new feature... site owners can incorporate an Evernote clip-button on their pages/articles...



... which offers more or less the same as I am suggesting here for XenForo.

See also: http://blog.evernote.com/2010/09/09/evernote-site-memory-button/

 

[anotheralias]

Oh ok, I get it - like the Daily Mail has 'add to my favorite stories.'

 

[kkm323]

maybe you should see how youtube operate (playlist)
under each thread you have an option where you can create folders and safe threads or post to that directory

 

[Tanax]

I suggested a similar(if not nearly exactly the same) feature on the IPS forums except I called it "Collections". Basically users can create collections and add(bookmark) threads to a collection they have made. Other users can then view these collections(if made public) and see the threads inside. This would also allow for SHARING collections of threads which is awesome for new users. Admins or staff can then create a collection of threads like "For newly registered" and link to that collection in a sticky thread or whatever. I would also be able to create a collection of threads and call that collection "My ideas" and add all suggestions I've made here for XenForo.

Users can subscribe/follow a collection which would alert the user if any changes has been made to the collection as a whole. Users can also subscribe/follow the content of a collection which would alert users if any new posts has been made in those threads(basically just subscribing to all of those threads in that collection). Users can also do both of those.

Anyhow, here's the original idea thread at IPS, worth reading as it goes into quite detailed description of this feature(which basically is just an extended version of yours!): http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/303396-collections/

It could also be discussed if you would be able to add POSTS aswell into collections and then just mark posts and threads differently in the collections like a post icon in front of a post in a collection and a thread icon in front of a thread in a collection or perhaps different colors.

 

[Shanj]

I wan t this to be "My Library" link on top bar

- forums I especially like eg new add-ons, announcements
- threads I find useful informative or cute
- posts I find useful informative or cute
- PCs I don't want to forget
- members I like

Section lists all on one page
+ categorisation within sections

Option to set my own labels as well as existing (not to lose existing but my own annotation)

 

[MGSteve]

I just got directed here after I made a similar suggestion! This was my post...

How many times have you looked through a forum, seen a post and thought - blimey, that's a useful tip or information. And then when you need it, completely forgotten where it was.
If there was a way to save a reference to the post - say, how eBay does when you add a watch to a listing.

Something like a 'Add to list' button, which then adds the post to a list which you can access through your control panel. You could then setup as many lists as you want and never loose those useful posts again!

Note, others have said 'isn't this what subscribed threads was for'. The answer is no. Take this scenario, you are browsing through a long thread and find a superb post that you want to remember. If you subscribe to the thread, yes you can find the thread again, but if there are hundreds of replies, you'll need to trawl through the entire thread to find the post again.

You need to be able to bookmark / remember / add to list / whatever a particular post, it needs to link to that particular post, not the entire thread.

 

[Kier]

I like this idea, but my primary cause to not put it to the top of the priority list is that you have it already... Everyone is using a web browser, and they tend to have rather good and mature bookmark / favourite functionality built in already.

 

[TNCclubman]

I would much rather have an import bookmarks from your browser to our xF accounts so I can access my bookmarks from anywhere in the world, from any public browser in any internet cafe anywhere. That would make our members have something that no social site has. Your home Bookmarks online.

 

[MGSteve]

I like this idea, but my primary cause to not put it to the top of the priority list is that you have it already... Everyone is using a web browser, and they tend to have rather good and mature bookmark / favourite functionality built in already.

Whilst I understand your point - my point is that I don't want to bookmark loads of pages in my browser that then get lost if I reinstall the OS & don't back up the favourites (as I've just done (d'oh)).

Its going to sound snotty, but its not meant to; - if it was as simple as bookmarking the page, don't you think we'd be doing it anyway

Besides which I may not want to bookmark the page, being able to jump to somewhere within the forum and see all the favourite posts listed would be rather useful, as opposed to resorting to browsing through favourites.

Also, and this is the killer point - many people, myself included, use more than 1 browser on more than 1 computer to logon to a forum. So if I added to it to the favourite on one computer, you can bet your life I won't be at that computer when I want to recall it.

Whilst you're (hopefully) reading this Kier, can you have a quick look at a development question I posted, only take you 2 secs to answer and I need to know the answer as its for a project I'm pitching for

 

[dieketzer]

what id love is the ability for users to assemble others into lists, a la twitter, and 'watched thread' categories.

 

[Nick]

I would much rather have an import bookmarks from your browser to our xF accounts so I can access my bookmarks from anywhere in the world, from any public browser in any internet cafe anywhere. That would make our members have something that no social site has. Your home Bookmarks online.

You mean just like www.xmarks.com?

 

[dieketzer]

xmarks was inches from going offline only months ago. they were then bought by somebody and no doubt the new owners will seek to monetise xmarks soon enough.
firefox4 and chrome both have native bookmark sharing functionality as well.
imo running your own 'xmarks' on xenforo probably wouldnt get a lot of use due to trust issues. its easy for people to trust their secrets to a website they arent invested into and have no presence on, and are thus 'anonymous', but it is unlikely they would do the same on a website they are an active contributing member on.

 

[TNCclubman]

You mean just like www.xmarks.com?

no, i can upload a copy of my .json bookmarks and download them to another browser. Im not doing that at an internet cafe though. But it would be cool to log on to my xf site, and have a drop down of my bookmarks anywhere i log in.

 

[Kier]

Sure, I didn't say it won't be done, just that there is not a burning need for it right now, as browser bookmarks do 80% of the required task.

 

[Nick]

no, i can upload a copy of my .json bookmarks and download them to another browser. Im not doing that at an internet cafe though. But it would be cool to log on to my xf site, and have a drop down of my bookmarks anywhere i log in.

You don't have to sync the Xmarks to the secondary browser(s). You can access all of your bookmarks online through the Xmarks website. Therefore, there is no plugin/addon necessary needed to access your bookmarks. They are accessible through your web browser on any computer with an Intnernet connection.

Kier brought up a good point that the functionality already exists in all of our daily lives. Why reinvent?