How to Quickly Create a Giant Links Post using del.icio.us and Flock
By Joshua on March 25 2008
Last week, I put together a giant collection of links about blogging. It may look like it was a lot of work, but it actually only took about ten minutes. Want to find out how? Keep reading.
1. Find quality links
This is the most important part of creating the links post. But for me, it didn't actually add any work. Why? Because I've been bookmarking sites about blogging as a personal reference. Over the past few months I just read and explored my feeds trying to learn everything I could about blogging. When I found something valuable, I'd bookmark it. That means that it has gotten past not just one, but two layers of filtering.
- I read the article and found it worthwhile
- I wanted to be able to refer back to it
The better you are at filtering, the more likely your readers will find the list useful.
2. Bookmark the relevant sites in del.icio.us
This is especially easy in Flock, which gives you a giant star button to favorite a site, and can automatically add the bookmark to your del.icio.us account. The time it takes to add a site? Usually less than 3 seconds, including tagging it.
3. Use Flock's Web Clipboard to transfer the links into WordPress
Though Flock is billed as a social browser, one of it's handiest features is the web clipboard, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with social networking. Here's how to use it.
- Go to your del.icio.us page with the links you want to include
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Open the web clipboard by clicking this button
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Drag each link from the del.icio.us page to the clipboard
- Login to WordPress and start a new entry
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Drag each link from the clipboard into the editing window, and it will automatically insert the complete link. No need to mess around with HTML or manually add URLs!
Of course, as I went through my bookmarks, I found a few that either weren't relevant to my readers, or weren't as high in quality as the rest of the links. Time it took to filter them out? About 5 minutes of the 10 I spent compiling the post.
Do you have any tips to speed up posting quality content?
What our readers said
This is a really useful post.
Thanks,
It’s so nice to see a “how to find links” post that doesn’t involve Google.
@John: Thanks!
@Jeremy: Glad that you like it!
Joshua,
Your post inspired me to download the Flock toolbar. I’ve played with it a little, and am really enjoying all that can be done with it.
Thank you for sharing your find.
BTW: I am really enjoying your blog. Your posts are filled with tons of value. Keep up the great work.
@Barbara: Thanks! I use Flock for everything because of how easy it is to bookmark sites in del.icio.us, and since it is based on FireFox I can do all of my web development in it without worrying about any rendering quirks.