Scripted Re-Mark
This service helps you manage your bookmarks stored on popular social bookmarking site del.icio.us. If you've ever wanted to make edits to all your bookmarks in one hit ("batch mode"), then this is for you. It makes it easy to re-tag bookmarks en masse, make wholesale changes to URLs or update descriptions in bulk. You can also toggle public/private sharing settings and mass delete bookmarks.
*** EDIT August 2008 ***
Please note that this service now works with the new delicious.com site. If there are lingering problems with your setup, please get in touch.
Following the steps, you'll build, test and apply a set of rules to select bookmarks. Feel free to read about possible uses, see some examples and pick up some tips on our Help page.
NEW! Now with functions-as-parameters, tag stemming and "touched tag" for multi-stage processing of bookmarks.
1: Enter Details
Please provide your del.icio.us username. (This is used to help you test your rules before applying them.)
2: Build Rules
Create as many search/replace rules as you wish below. Field refers to the bookmark field to edit. Search is the string to match. Replace is the string that will be swapped in. Case is whether to ignore case, or it should be case-sensitive. Match determines whether it finds all matches in the string, or the first occurrence only.
NB: You can use Search and Replace as regular expressions (regexp). If you're really game, you can use functions in the Replace string. The "Tag Tidy" button will find and merge lexically similar tags for you.
3: Test Rules
Before applying the rules, it's a good idea to test that they actually have the desired effect. Here, you can check your original (left) versus transformed (right) bookmarks, for the first 100 bookmarks. Use the left and right arrows to scroll through your bookmarks. (Private bookmarks are not shown.) Please note that changes you see here are not reflected on your delicious account yet.
4: Apply Rules
The final step is applying the rules to your del.icio.us account. In another window, please open your bookmarks page and ensure that only entries you want to edit/delete are visible. You can do this through selecting tags and controlling the number of entries to list. All entries visible will be updated. (Remember to backup your bookmarks first!) Note that del.icio.us has a maximum of 100 items per page; if you wish to update more than that you will need to repeat this procedure for each pagefull.
To prevent abuse, del.icio.us has a "rate limiter" that will temporarily block your access if you send update requests at too great a speed. To stop this happening, please select a suitable delay between requests. (2-5 seconds is usually sufficient.)
Deletion: If you're looking to delete a set of bookmarks at this point, please note that all bookmarks visible on the target will be permanently deleted. (If you want to be selective, we suggest you use the "touched tag" feature to whittle down your set.) These bookmarks will be gone forever. To access the mass delete code, please click here.
If you use GreaseMonkey, you may enjoy Brian Gregory's Bulk Deleting and Sharing Tool, for GreaseMonkey. Check it out.
Comments, feedback, troubleshooting, suggestions and discussions to Freshblog, please.
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