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del.icio.us 101
At the Muskrat Jamboree (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
muskratjamboree) in late March, I offered to give a couple people a tutorial in using del.icio.us, which came up as a way to find things in small/rare fandoms (although it's also great for big fandoms). We didn't really have time at the con, so I figured I'd write something up.
If you're reading this and wondering what all the del.icio.us fuss is about, here's very fast overview, before I get into the tutorial part.
At it's most basic, del.icio.us is... bookmarks. *g*
The bookmarks are spiffy, mind you -- they sit on the del.icio.us servers, not on your computer, so they're available to you anywhere, if you have a browser and a connection; no more worries about "oh, crap, I bookmarked that at work. At my last job. CRAP."
There's also a section to add notes or a description to any bookmark, which is really cool (you can put a quote from a story, for example, to remind yourself about it). And best of all, there are tags, which make finding things so freaking much easier than trying to scroll through 800 random bookmarks that you forgot to stick in folders, or figuring out which folder you stuck something into. Personally, I think it's cool just on that level, but trust me: there's more.
Okay, now on to the real reasons for fans to use del.icio.us: it will bring you stories and vids and suchlike that you might not find on your own. There are two main ways to do this: the Network, and the Subscriptions.
Network
The network is sort of like a Friends list. You find people whose bookmarks interest you, and you add them to your network, and then any time you go look at your network page, you see all the bookmarks from all the people in your network.
Subscriptions
The subscriptions are... not like anything on LJ, I don't think. *g* They're how you track different subjects across the entire del.icio.us network, by subscribing to tags. I use these for pretty much all my fandoms, but they're crucial for small fandoms, so you don't miss anything. You can subscribe to any tag you can think of; if someone uses that tag on a bookmark, you'll see it show up on your subscriptions page.
This is really the strongest feature for fans, because it gives you access to everyone's tags, regardless of whether you know them, or whether they're really in the fandom or just doing a flyby one-shot bookmark on something.
There are some other cool features, too.
search
del.icio.us comes with a search, which lets you search either all of del.icio.us, just your own bookmarks, or the web. I don't use this often, but when I need it, it's a lifesaver (usually when I remember a keyword in a story that I neglected to use as a tag, but stuck in the description somewhere).
Links for...
del.icio.us lets you send links to specific people, as long as they also have a del.icio.us account. You just tag something for:username and it shows up in a private section called "links for you" in their account. No one else (not even the person you tagged) can see that you used that tag; the for: tag is only visible to the person who actually uses it.
privacy
del.icio.us allows you to save things privately, so that only you can see them, and it gives you a little indicator on any privately saved link so you know it's safe. This is fabulous.
If you want to see what someone's bookmarks look like, mine are here:
http://del.icio.us/arduinna
and you can see my network and subscriptions here:
http://del.icio.us/network/arduinna
http://del.icio.us/subscriptions/arduinna
If all of that sounds good and you're an intrepid sort who likes to figure things out completely on your own, go get an account at del.icio.us, and start bookmarking and tagging. Yay!
If you want a more info, read on below for a basic tutorial, or go to my website for a far more detailed version.
This assumes that you're comfortable with web-based services and don't want/need much in the way of specific, detailed instructions, but prefer general pointers to major features so you can figure the details out on your own.
In case the basics aren't enough, or if people want a more information about specific things as they go along, I put a far more detailed version up on my website, with step-by-step instructions on a lot of things, and a lot of screencaps. Each section here is also linked to the more detailed/expanded section on my website.
Note: I use Firefox, so if you're in a different browser there may be some slight differences in the interface, etc.
Accounts are free, and easy to set up: just go to del.icio.us and register. In the second step, it will ask you to install buttons for your browser; you want to do this. If you have Firefox, make sure you get the Firefox buttons/extension, which is a bit more useful than the standard del.icio.us buttons (there should be a link on the page for it; if not, go here to install it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1532).
del.icio.us will also offer you a Button Tutorial, which boils down to:
The square multi-colored button will take you directly to your del.icio.us account page (or the del.icio.us homepage if you're not logged in).
The tag-shaped button called "tag" will let you bookmark and tag whatever page you're on.
Creating bookmarks is pretty straightforward: click the Tag button, and fill in the popup. del.icio.us will automatically fill in the URL and add the page's title to the description field.
(click for larger version)
The only advice I have is to change the description of your bookmark to something meaningful if need be (I beg you, please do this), and to tag like a madwoman -- the more tags, the better organized things are, and the easier it is to find things.
NOTE: One very spiffy feature of del.icio.us is that if you highlight some text before you click the Tag button, it will put that text into the "notes" field, saving you some time. One slightly less spiffy feature is that the notes field has a character limit of about 255 characters, and will cut off anything beyond that when you hit save on your bookmark. Think pithy.
You cannot over-tag something. There are no limits in the system, so go to town; the more tags you use on something, the easier it is to find later (and the more information you give other people about your bookmark). You can globally (within your account) rename or delete any tags you screw up or accidentally duplicate, so you don't need to worry about making mistakes.
NOTE: Tags are space-separated, not comma-separated like they are on LJ. If you tag something "invisible man", you've given it two separate tags, "invisible" and "man". You can either combine words ("invisibleman") or use periods, hyphens, or underscores to keep them as one word ("invisible.man", "invisible-man", "invisible_man"). Other punctuation is also allowed, including slashes, which makes tracking pairings much easier.
del.icio.us offers something called "bundles", which effectively work like bookmark folders, with a couple of differences: 1) you can't have any sub-bundles, but 2) any given tag can be in as many bundles as you want. There's also no way to list the bundles in anything but strict alphabetical order (which takes into account uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols, as well as the alphabet itself).
There's a "bundle tags" link at the bottom of the right-hand box on your main bookmarks page; click that to start organizing your tags. Don't create a bundle unless you already have a tag to put in it, though -- the system automatically deletes any empty bundles, so you'll just have to recreate it later.
My bundles are perhaps a tad over-organized. *kof* I have a lot, and the strict alphabetical order was starting to drive me crazy, so I forced "sub-bundles" to keep things together by using specific words and symbols in front of things.
This is pretty straightforward as far as it goes. One thing that a lot of people miss, though, is that you can sort using multiple tags.
Click on the tag you want; it'll bring up everything tagged with that term, plus a new box of "related tags", each with a number, a plus sign, and the tag name (e.g., 23 + slash). The plus sign and the tag name are each clickable, and do different things.
If you click the new tag name, you get a list of every one of your bookmarks that has that tag (as a new top-level sort, in other words).
If you click the plus sign instead, you get a list of bookmarks that contain both your original sort term and the new sort term -- which will match the number that was next to the plus sign (23 + slash will bring up 23 stories that are tagged both slash and your original term).
From there, you'll get another new box of related tags, and you can continue to refine your search.
There's a very cool feature on del.icio.us that lets you send bookmarks straight to someone else: the for:username tag. Once you have people in your network, del.icio.us will automatically offer you a list of their names to select on the bookmark popup, but you can also just type in the name of anyone with an account on del.icio.us. The "links for you" link on their front page will go bold and tell them the number of new links that have been sent to them, and they can click through and check them out.
NOTE: You can both save a bookmark privately and tag it for:username, and no one but you and that person will be able to see that bookmark.
Subscriptions let you keep track of all bookmarks across the entire del.icio.us network tagged with a given term. Use multiple variants to be sure you've caught everything (e.g., I'm subscribed to invisibleman, invisible_man, invisible-man, invisible.man, iman, i-man, i_man, and i.man, because I want everything I can find about Invisible Man). To see everything across the entire del.icio.us network, fill in the tag field but leave the username blank.
You can also do a custom subscription to a given person's tags, if you don't want to see everything they bookmark. This is where you'd use the username and the tag name together.
Once you've added things, your subscription page will show you a list of all the bookmarks containing those tags, in chronological order. To see just the results for one tag, click that tag in your subscription list.
The network is for people whose bookmarks interest you to a large degree. You can type their name into the "add" box on your network page, or you can go to their bookmarks and click the "add [name] to your network" link. If there's someone who bookmarks one or two types of things you really want to see, but you don't particularly care about the rest, do a custom subscription instead of networking them.
Once you've added people, your network page will show you a list of everything they've bookmarked, in chronological order.
On your network page, you'll also see a box on the right containing "your network" and "your fans"; the first is people whose bookmarks you're watching, the second is people who are watching your bookmarks. If it's a mutual relationship, there's a little swirly arrow next to the name. You can take anyone out of your network by clicking the symbol next to their name -- when you hover over it, it turns into a bright red x for delete. You can add anyone in your fans by clicking on the plus sign next to their name.
Although del.icio.us is set up to be public, social bookmarks, there are ways to keep things private as well.
In Settings, go to "private saving" (under the Bookmarks heading), and check the box that says "allow private saving of bookmarks". This will give you an option to make any bookmark private, so that no one but you can see it.
NOTE: If you import your existing bookmarks from a browser, all of those bookmarks will automatically be set to private, and you'll need to go through and set them each to "share" individually if you want them to be public.
You can also make your network private (both who you're watching, and who's watching you), by going to Settings, then "network privacy" (under the People heading), and unchecking the "allow other people to see your network" box. You can still network people, and they can still network you, it's just not visible on your page at all.
Oh, c'mon, egoboo is the other big reason to use del.icio.us, and everyone knows it. *g*
One thing you can do right off the bat to give people access to more of your stuff is go to Settings, Edit Profile, and add your name and URL (website, LJ, whatever). The name will show up on your del.icio.us page as a clickable link to whatever URL you input (mine is set up like this).
But the best thing, of course, is seeing how many people are tagging your stuff, and what, if anything, they're saying about it. There are two main ways to do this.
- Tag your own work and save it privately (or not, your choice), so you can see if anyone else ever tags it (by way of the "saved by xx people" feature).
- Type your name into the search bar, see what pops up
Once you have a bookmark to look at, you can click on "saved by xx people" if it's there, and that will bring you to a page listing everyone who's tagged that URL, what tags they used on it, and what notes they added, if any.
NOTE: del.icio.us grabs the exact URL of the page being bookmarked. This is spiffy, except it's not entirely accurate for giving a complete count on how many people have actually bookmarked particular content.
Regular websites can be under "http://www.sitename.xxx" or "http://sitename.xxx", as two separate things.
LJ is even more split up, with lj-cuts, ?style=mine, ?format=light, and whatnot. People tend to tag things on the fly, without noticing what URL they're on, so things can show up in a variety of ways. For instance, all of these link to the exact same entry (MJ's panel schedule), and any one of them may be what someone uses on del.icio.us:
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?format=light
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?style=mine
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1?format=light
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1?style=mine
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?mode=reply
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?thread=206664#t206664
etc.
So if you're checking to see how many people have tagged your story, try a few variants to get a more accurate count.
The basic del.icio.us interface and functions are enough for many people, but if you want more, there's lots more out there. I've only used some of these, though, since I'm mostly happy with the basic version.
del.icio.us linkbacks -- this is a bookmarklet that you drag onto your toolbar. You click it on any given page, and it pops up a small window listing all the people who've tagged that page and what they've said about it. Useful for egoboo (it's faster than checking the "saved by" links) and for getting a feel for what sorts of tags people are using for something. Really, it's very very handy -- when it works. Which it isn't, as I write this. Still, it's worth getting, because eventually it should be working again.
Bringing del.icio.us recs to your webpage in a clean, nice-looking, automatically updated format: http://yuletidetreasure.org/yuletide_on_delicious.txt, created by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astolat. This was originally meant to make tracking Yuletide recs easier, but it's flexible and can handle multiple terms, so you can use it for any tag you want. The file comes with instructions on how to use it; you leave the cgi alone and just change the html and css to what you want. I'd never seen cgi coding in my life before using this, and I managed. *g* If you want to see what it looks like in action, here are a few versions currently in use, starting with mine:
There's an impressive list of add-ons and tools here .
murklins has gone through that list and put together a post of things she uses to, as she puts it, "tart up del.icio.us", with explanations, here.
If you're on Firefox and you have Greasemonkey installed, there are a lot of scripts available to tweak del.icio.us, here: http://userscripts.org/tags/del.icio.us.
If you want to have multiple accounts and an easy way to post to all of them (again, from Firefox), try this: http://delicious.mozdev.org/index.html.
And again, if that wasn't enough information, I put a far more detailed version up on my website, covering more features, and with step-by-step instructions on a lot of things, including screencaps.
muskratjamboree) in late March, I offered to give a couple people a tutorial in using del.icio.us, which came up as a way to find things in small/rare fandoms (although it's also great for big fandoms). We didn't really have time at the con, so I figured I'd write something up.If you're reading this and wondering what all the del.icio.us fuss is about, here's very fast overview, before I get into the tutorial part.
The basics
At it's most basic, del.icio.us is... bookmarks. *g*
The bookmarks are spiffy, mind you -- they sit on the del.icio.us servers, not on your computer, so they're available to you anywhere, if you have a browser and a connection; no more worries about "oh, crap, I bookmarked that at work. At my last job. CRAP."
There's also a section to add notes or a description to any bookmark, which is really cool (you can put a quote from a story, for example, to remind yourself about it). And best of all, there are tags, which make finding things so freaking much easier than trying to scroll through 800 random bookmarks that you forgot to stick in folders, or figuring out which folder you stuck something into. Personally, I think it's cool just on that level, but trust me: there's more.
The cool stuff
Okay, now on to the real reasons for fans to use del.icio.us: it will bring you stories and vids and suchlike that you might not find on your own. There are two main ways to do this: the Network, and the Subscriptions.
Network
The network is sort of like a Friends list. You find people whose bookmarks interest you, and you add them to your network, and then any time you go look at your network page, you see all the bookmarks from all the people in your network.
Subscriptions
The subscriptions are... not like anything on LJ, I don't think. *g* They're how you track different subjects across the entire del.icio.us network, by subscribing to tags. I use these for pretty much all my fandoms, but they're crucial for small fandoms, so you don't miss anything. You can subscribe to any tag you can think of; if someone uses that tag on a bookmark, you'll see it show up on your subscriptions page.
This is really the strongest feature for fans, because it gives you access to everyone's tags, regardless of whether you know them, or whether they're really in the fandom or just doing a flyby one-shot bookmark on something.
The extras
There are some other cool features, too.
search
del.icio.us comes with a search, which lets you search either all of del.icio.us, just your own bookmarks, or the web. I don't use this often, but when I need it, it's a lifesaver (usually when I remember a keyword in a story that I neglected to use as a tag, but stuck in the description somewhere).
Links for...
del.icio.us lets you send links to specific people, as long as they also have a del.icio.us account. You just tag something for:username and it shows up in a private section called "links for you" in their account. No one else (not even the person you tagged) can see that you used that tag; the for: tag is only visible to the person who actually uses it.
privacy
del.icio.us allows you to save things privately, so that only you can see them, and it gives you a little indicator on any privately saved link so you know it's safe. This is fabulous.
Checking things out
If you want to see what someone's bookmarks look like, mine are here:
http://del.icio.us/arduinna
and you can see my network and subscriptions here:
http://del.icio.us/network/arduinna
http://del.icio.us/subscriptions/arduinna
If all of that sounds good and you're an intrepid sort who likes to figure things out completely on your own, go get an account at del.icio.us, and start bookmarking and tagging. Yay!
More info
If you want a more info, read on below for a basic tutorial, or go to my website for a far more detailed version.
The tutorial
This assumes that you're comfortable with web-based services and don't want/need much in the way of specific, detailed instructions, but prefer general pointers to major features so you can figure the details out on your own.
In case the basics aren't enough, or if people want a more information about specific things as they go along, I put a far more detailed version up on my website, with step-by-step instructions on a lot of things, and a lot of screencaps. Each section here is also linked to the more detailed/expanded section on my website.
Note: I use Firefox, so if you're in a different browser there may be some slight differences in the interface, etc.
Getting an account
Accounts are free, and easy to set up: just go to del.icio.us and register. In the second step, it will ask you to install buttons for your browser; you want to do this. If you have Firefox, make sure you get the Firefox buttons/extension, which is a bit more useful than the standard del.icio.us buttons (there should be a link on the page for it; if not, go here to install it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1532).
del.icio.us will also offer you a Button Tutorial, which boils down to:
The square multi-colored button will take you directly to your del.icio.us account page (or the del.icio.us homepage if you're not logged in). The tag-shaped button called "tag" will let you bookmark and tag whatever page you're on.Bookmarks
Creating bookmarks is pretty straightforward: click the Tag button, and fill in the popup. del.icio.us will automatically fill in the URL and add the page's title to the description field.
(click for larger version)
The only advice I have is to change the description of your bookmark to something meaningful if need be (I beg you, please do this), and to tag like a madwoman -- the more tags, the better organized things are, and the easier it is to find things.
NOTE: One very spiffy feature of del.icio.us is that if you highlight some text before you click the Tag button, it will put that text into the "notes" field, saving you some time. One slightly less spiffy feature is that the notes field has a character limit of about 255 characters, and will cut off anything beyond that when you hit save on your bookmark. Think pithy.
Tags
You cannot over-tag something. There are no limits in the system, so go to town; the more tags you use on something, the easier it is to find later (and the more information you give other people about your bookmark). You can globally (within your account) rename or delete any tags you screw up or accidentally duplicate, so you don't need to worry about making mistakes.
NOTE: Tags are space-separated, not comma-separated like they are on LJ. If you tag something "invisible man", you've given it two separate tags, "invisible" and "man". You can either combine words ("invisibleman") or use periods, hyphens, or underscores to keep them as one word ("invisible.man", "invisible-man", "invisible_man"). Other punctuation is also allowed, including slashes, which makes tracking pairings much easier.
"Bundling" or organizing tags
del.icio.us offers something called "bundles", which effectively work like bookmark folders, with a couple of differences: 1) you can't have any sub-bundles, but 2) any given tag can be in as many bundles as you want. There's also no way to list the bundles in anything but strict alphabetical order (which takes into account uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols, as well as the alphabet itself).
There's a "bundle tags" link at the bottom of the right-hand box on your main bookmarks page; click that to start organizing your tags. Don't create a bundle unless you already have a tag to put in it, though -- the system automatically deletes any empty bundles, so you'll just have to recreate it later.
My bundles are perhaps a tad over-organized. *kof* I have a lot, and the strict alphabetical order was starting to drive me crazy, so I forced "sub-bundles" to keep things together by using specific words and symbols in front of things.
Using tags to find bookmarks
This is pretty straightforward as far as it goes. One thing that a lot of people miss, though, is that you can sort using multiple tags.
Click on the tag you want; it'll bring up everything tagged with that term, plus a new box of "related tags", each with a number, a plus sign, and the tag name (e.g., 23 + slash). The plus sign and the tag name are each clickable, and do different things.
If you click the new tag name, you get a list of every one of your bookmarks that has that tag (as a new top-level sort, in other words).
If you click the plus sign instead, you get a list of bookmarks that contain both your original sort term and the new sort term -- which will match the number that was next to the plus sign (23 + slash will bring up 23 stories that are tagged both slash and your original term).
From there, you'll get another new box of related tags, and you can continue to refine your search.
Using tags to directly share bookmarks with someone
There's a very cool feature on del.icio.us that lets you send bookmarks straight to someone else: the for:username tag. Once you have people in your network, del.icio.us will automatically offer you a list of their names to select on the bookmark popup, but you can also just type in the name of anyone with an account on del.icio.us. The "links for you" link on their front page will go bold and tell them the number of new links that have been sent to them, and they can click through and check them out.
NOTE: You can both save a bookmark privately and tag it for:username, and no one but you and that person will be able to see that bookmark.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions let you keep track of all bookmarks across the entire del.icio.us network tagged with a given term. Use multiple variants to be sure you've caught everything (e.g., I'm subscribed to invisibleman, invisible_man, invisible-man, invisible.man, iman, i-man, i_man, and i.man, because I want everything I can find about Invisible Man). To see everything across the entire del.icio.us network, fill in the tag field but leave the username blank.
You can also do a custom subscription to a given person's tags, if you don't want to see everything they bookmark. This is where you'd use the username and the tag name together.
Once you've added things, your subscription page will show you a list of all the bookmarks containing those tags, in chronological order. To see just the results for one tag, click that tag in your subscription list.
Network
The network is for people whose bookmarks interest you to a large degree. You can type their name into the "add" box on your network page, or you can go to their bookmarks and click the "add [name] to your network" link. If there's someone who bookmarks one or two types of things you really want to see, but you don't particularly care about the rest, do a custom subscription instead of networking them.
Once you've added people, your network page will show you a list of everything they've bookmarked, in chronological order.
On your network page, you'll also see a box on the right containing "your network" and "your fans"; the first is people whose bookmarks you're watching, the second is people who are watching your bookmarks. If it's a mutual relationship, there's a little swirly arrow next to the name. You can take anyone out of your network by clicking the symbol next to their name -- when you hover over it, it turns into a bright red x for delete. You can add anyone in your fans by clicking on the plus sign next to their name.
Privacy
Although del.icio.us is set up to be public, social bookmarks, there are ways to keep things private as well.
In Settings, go to "private saving" (under the Bookmarks heading), and check the box that says "allow private saving of bookmarks". This will give you an option to make any bookmark private, so that no one but you can see it.
NOTE: If you import your existing bookmarks from a browser, all of those bookmarks will automatically be set to private, and you'll need to go through and set them each to "share" individually if you want them to be public.
You can also make your network private (both who you're watching, and who's watching you), by going to Settings, then "network privacy" (under the People heading), and unchecking the "allow other people to see your network" box. You can still network people, and they can still network you, it's just not visible on your page at all.
Egoboo
Oh, c'mon, egoboo is the other big reason to use del.icio.us, and everyone knows it. *g*
One thing you can do right off the bat to give people access to more of your stuff is go to Settings, Edit Profile, and add your name and URL (website, LJ, whatever). The name will show up on your del.icio.us page as a clickable link to whatever URL you input (mine is set up like this).
But the best thing, of course, is seeing how many people are tagging your stuff, and what, if anything, they're saying about it. There are two main ways to do this.
- Tag your own work and save it privately (or not, your choice), so you can see if anyone else ever tags it (by way of the "saved by xx people" feature).
- Type your name into the search bar, see what pops up
Once you have a bookmark to look at, you can click on "saved by xx people" if it's there, and that will bring you to a page listing everyone who's tagged that URL, what tags they used on it, and what notes they added, if any.
NOTE: del.icio.us grabs the exact URL of the page being bookmarked. This is spiffy, except it's not entirely accurate for giving a complete count on how many people have actually bookmarked particular content.
Regular websites can be under "http://www.sitename.xxx" or "http://sitename.xxx", as two separate things.
LJ is even more split up, with lj-cuts, ?style=mine, ?format=light, and whatnot. People tend to tag things on the fly, without noticing what URL they're on, so things can show up in a variety of ways. For instance, all of these link to the exact same entry (MJ's panel schedule), and any one of them may be what someone uses on del.icio.us:
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?format=light
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?style=mine
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1?format=light
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1?style=mine
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?mode=reply
http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?thread=206664#t206664
etc.
So if you're checking to see how many people have tagged your story, try a few variants to get a more accurate count.
Advanced stuff
The basic del.icio.us interface and functions are enough for many people, but if you want more, there's lots more out there. I've only used some of these, though, since I'm mostly happy with the basic version.
del.icio.us linkbacks -- this is a bookmarklet that you drag onto your toolbar. You click it on any given page, and it pops up a small window listing all the people who've tagged that page and what they've said about it. Useful for egoboo (it's faster than checking the "saved by" links) and for getting a feel for what sorts of tags people are using for something. Really, it's very very handy -- when it works. Which it isn't, as I write this. Still, it's worth getting, because eventually it should be working again.
Bringing del.icio.us recs to your webpage in a clean, nice-looking, automatically updated format: http://yuletidetreasure.org/yuletide_on_delicious.txt, created by
astolat. This was originally meant to make tracking Yuletide recs easier, but it's flexible and can handle multiple terms, so you can use it for any tag you want. The file comes with instructions on how to use it; you leave the cgi alone and just change the html and css to what you want. I'd never seen cgi coding in my life before using this, and I managed. *g* If you want to see what it looks like in action, here are a few versions currently in use, starting with mine:
http://www.trickster.org/arduinna/recs/quickrecs.cgi
http://intimations.org/fanfic/delicious_recs.cgi
http://www.hovenweep.org/~xenacryst/delicious.php (a php version based on astolat's script)
There's an impressive list of add-ons and tools here .
murklins has gone through that list and put together a post of things she uses to, as she puts it, "tart up del.icio.us", with explanations, here.If you're on Firefox and you have Greasemonkey installed, there are a lot of scripts available to tweak del.icio.us, here: http://userscripts.org/tags/del.icio.us.
If you want to have multiple accounts and an easy way to post to all of them (again, from Firefox), try this: http://delicious.mozdev.org/index.html.
And again, if that wasn't enough information, I put a far more detailed version up on my website, covering more features, and with step-by-step instructions on a lot of things, including screencaps.
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