SEP 36: Build a link archive

I’ve experimented with a number of different methods of digital bookmarking over the years. Mostly plaintext files with long lists of vague thematically organised links; a brief go with Pocket; and more recently Linkhut.

As more and more of my ‘systems’ are folded into this site in some form it seems to make sense to inboard bookmarking too.

There is basically only one design goal: Be as easy to use to use as possible.

Any amount of friction in a system like this is a disaster, above all it needs to be fast and get out of my way. I love plaintext files, and will til the the day I die, but I don’t want to be cracking open a text file and copying URLs to-and-fro any more. Sure, I’ve made that system about as streamlined as it can by now, with a concoction of 1 character aliases to said text file and another 1 char alias to a bookmarklet that emits a page as a datetimed markdown link, and it… works, but it’s gotta be smoother than that, it’s gotta in line, in ‘mode’.

Summary: Fast, asynchronous.

To satisfy that requirement I will use a relay service of some sort. Linkhut has a solid API and a great interface. For the time being I’ll use the hosted version but may consider self-hosting the code if the system proves to my liking (not a priority given that I only intend to use it as a relay).

By relay I mean that I will be able to freely chuck links into Linkhut without leaving the browser or shifting my hands from the keyboard (using a keyboard shortcut). Then, asynchronously, I can have a cron job that pulls new links from the API and processes them into my local format, from there they are available to the tooling that builds this site.

Somewhere in the pipeline all links should also be pushed to various Internet Archives.

Still to explore:

  1. Settle on a metadata format for the links

  2. Think about a system of automated tagging for known domains

Examples of prior art in the wild:

And yes, the irony that only one of those link archives is still active (4 can only be accessed through the internet archive) is not lost on me :D