FAQ
From Ma.gnolia Community Wiki
What is Ma.gnolia?
Ma.gnolia lets you easily save your favorite bookmarks online, and find new websites from what other people have found. By keeping your bookmarks online, you can get to them at any time from any computer. And, with so many people on the same website doing that, you can share some or all of your bookmarks just by saving them. Other people can learn from what you save, and you can learn from others. It's that simple.
Can you give me an example of how social bookmarking works?
Sure. Let's say you're a Ma.gnolia member and you find a website you really like that sells puppy dogs. You can come to Ma.gnolia and save that website to your list of bookmarks. When you save that website, Ma.gnolia will ask you what "tags" you want to apply to the website. The website is about puppy dogs, and you like puppy dogs, so you "tag" the website as "puppy dogs."
Then, months later, you realize that you need some new puppy dogs. If you go to a regular search engine and search for "puppy dogs," you may not find that puppy dog site you really liked. This happens all the time because search engine results change every day. But if you go to Ma.gnolia and search your bookmarks for "puppy dogs", you'll immediately find the websites that you marked as being good sites for puppy dogs. You save time by not searching for the same thing twice!
But why do all the work yourself? You can also search for websites that other Ma.gnolia users have tagged with 'puppy dogs'. That way you'll only get sites that other puppy dog lovers thought were good enough to save. By just saving the bookmarks you like and tagging them, Ma.gnolia users help each other without even trying!
What's is a tag?
A tag is just a word or series of words that tells you what a website is about. Think of it like a label or the word you'd search for if you were trying to find a website again. Ma.gnolia does a lot with those little tags you give to bookmarks.
What's a tag cloud?
A tag cloud is a way to see all tags associated with a person, a group or a webpage. All of the tags are listed alphabetically, but the most popular tags appear bigger so you can see what the most popular terms are. You may want to browse our tutorial section. We have some hints in there on how to use tag clouds in the Ma.gnolia system.
How is Ma.gnolia different from other social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us?
One way to answer this is to check out the page written just for this question: Why is Ma.gnolia Different. Another is to ask the question in the wiki: What Makes Ma.gnolia Different?
Can I import my bookmarks from Del.icio.us (or BlinkList, or Furl, or Simpy??)
Currently you can only import from Del.icio.us and supported browsers. If you want to import from an unsupported service, please add it to the Feature Suggestions page.
Note that you need to be signed into Ma.gnolia in order to access bookmark importing tools, which you can find on the Support Page.
Why can't other people see my saved copies of web pages?
Ma.gnolia prevents the sharing of saved web page copies out of respect for the law and the policies of the source web site. Many websites worth bookmarking have content copying restrictions, and some use subscriber logins to allow access to content. Allowing everyone to view each other's saved copies could harm the business of other websites.
Some of my bookmarks don't have saved copies? What's going on?
In some cases we're prohibited from making saved copies by the coding of the website. The same rules that Google and the Internet Archive follow are followed by Ma.gnolia, where we respect the 'no-cache' meta-tag. In other cases, it may be that the site is unavailable when we try to make the saved copy, or that the archiving function is running behind. If you feel there should be a saved copy where there isn't, be sure to contact us so we can look into it.
How do I add bookmarks to a group?
This icon appears beside every bookmark. Click it, and you'll be able to choose the group you want to send the bookmark to. Remember that each bookmark sent to a group is a copy, so you can customize the title, description, rating and tags for the bookmark as it appears in the group.
How do ratings work in groups?
A link may have a rating from each individual user who saved it. Those ratings are shown on the detail page for the link. Additionally, a link has a rating from the group. The first person to send a link to a group sets the group's rating. People who come later may change that rating.
Why does the thumbnail picture for some bookmarks look wrong?
Ma.gnolia uses a third-party service to create the small images of saved copies of web pages. Sometimes the service gives an out of date image, or one from another part of the site. Although this isn't desirable, there's not much Ma.gnolia can do to correct it at this time. Note that even if the thumbnail is wrong, the saved copy does contain what you read when you bookmarked the page, because we make that copy ourselves.
What types of URLs or protocols can be marked in Ma.gnolia?
You can mark the following types of URLs for your favorite web content:
- http://
- https://
- feed://
- ftp://
- rtp://
- rtsp://
- mms://
- itms://
- webcal://
- textmate://
What browsers does Ma.gnolia support?
Ma.gnolia is built with web standards to provide the most consistent experience in all browsers. But even when you build on standards, some things don't work quite right everywhere. Here's the list of browsers that are tested to work properly with Ma.gnolia:
- IE6 and up
- Safari
- Camino
- FireFox
- OmniWeb
Members report that Opera 9 works quite well with Ma.gnolia.
Why am I having trouble bookmarking non-HTML files like movies or PDFs in Safari?
There is a problem in Safari that causes the bookmarklet to fail when trying to mark a file that isn't a standard web page, such as a movie file, an mp3 file or a PDF. The symptoms are that the title shows up as 'About: Blank' in Ma.gnolia, and the history of Safari's 'Back' button is lost. We have reported the problem to Apple, but until they fix this issue Safari will not be able to add bookmarks to non-HTML files using a bookmarklet.
There are two ways around this problem until it's fixed:
- The first is just to copy and paste the website address into the Add Bookmark tool found on Ma.gnolia bookmark pages.
- The second is to use FireFox or Internet Explorer to add bookmarks to Ma.gnolia with the bookmarklet, which you can find at the Ma.gnolia bookmarklets page.
What's a 'Lite' Feed?
Lite feeds are just like regular feeds, but they contain less information. Lite feeds can be added to web page templates, bringing continually updated content from Ma.gnolia. Like regular feeds, Lite feeds are delivered in RSS and Atom formats.
What does the HTML output for the link roll look like?
<div class="magnolia-linkroll">
<h2 class="magnolia-linkroll-title">Marked in Magnolia</h2>
<dl>
<dt class="magnolia-mark">
<a href="http://link.com/" title="Visit http://link.com/" class="magnolia-link">
Bookmark Title
</a>
</dt>
<dd class="magnolia-description">
Description
</dd>
</dl>
</div>
What Character encoding does Ma.gnolia support?
Ma.gnolia supports UTF-8 character encoding. It is possible for members to see improper characters in tags and bookmark data when using browsers that use a non-UTF-8 input mode, or after importing bookmarks that have non-UTF-8 characters. There is no automated fix for this problem at this time, so manual editing will be needed to correct non-UTF-8 characters.
Why does your site have ads? Can I get rid of them?
Ma.gnolia display ads on some pages to users of our free service. We understand that ads are not everyone's favorite thing to look at. We have chosen to use site advertising because we are dedicated to ensuring that Ma.gnolia is a service that can survive and grow. To do so means that we need to pay for stuff, like servers, bandwidth, the odd meal - that sort of thing. We hope you'll at least find the ads inoffensive, and tried to integrate them into the design gracefully. If we can do better, let us know.
Can I use an ad blocker on your site?
We think our ads don't impose too much on the eyes, but if you do you are free to use an ad blocker. Be advised that some add blockers such as floppymoose can interfere with Ma.gnolia and prevent you from seeing control buttons. We have no control over this, and do not intend this behavior. Turning off the ad blocker for Ma.gnolia will ensure you can see everything that you should be able to click.
Is my information available to everybody?
Absolutely not! We've worked hard so others can see only those things about you that you want them to know, and we give you the ability to make any of your bookmarks private so only you can see them. Please read our privacy policy for complete information.
How is the Ma.gnolia code licensed?
Ma.gnolia's core code base is proprietary, though we do use some open source libraries. Our Dashboard widget is released under the MIT license and we expect to release some of the Rails plug-ins we've developed under an open-source license.
What is the ownership of Ma.gnolia?
Ma.gnolia is privately held, with a majority owned by the founder, Larry Halff.
How do I delete my account?
Click the "Remove My Account" button on the account profile page.
Can I change my screen name?
You can changes this on your account profile page.
How Can I Find My Blog's API Endpoint?
The Endpoint is just an URL that tells Ma.gnolia where to talk to your blog. Endpoints for some of the most popular blog platforms are:
- Wordpress: http://karlotti/PATH/TO/xmlrpc.php
- Movable Type: http://YOURSITE/PATH/TO/mt-xmlrpc.cgi
- Typo: http://YOURSITE/backend/xmlrpc
- Livejournal: http://www.livejournal.com/interface/blogger/
- Typepad: http://www.typepad.com/t/api
- Blogger: https://www.blogger.com/atom/
You can find your blog's API Endpoint using this great list of Endpoints for many blog platforms. Thanks to Adriaan Tijsseling for maintaining this list.
What if I still have questions?
Just ask us! We're here to answer any questions you may have.
