Frequently Asked Questions
Last updated November 08, 2006
Why two websites and what are the differences between BookmarkSync.com and Sync2it.com?
Sync2It.com and BookmarkSync.com are two different synchronization servers operated by the same company, Secure Data Systems (That's me, Jack) I started a new server rather than modify the original code at Sync2It for several reasons.
1. The original SyncIT server code would have been too difficult to modify in place, although it was well written for the time, I wanted to make some significant structural changes to the code.
2.
I wanted to incrementally build out the new site over time and minimize the impact to thousands of existing users.
3. I wanted to eliminate a single point of failure and provide a secondary sync server if necessary.
4. I wanted to experiment with different pricing and service models for the service.
If you are interested in using either or both services, please keep this in mind. BookmarkSync.com and Sync2It.com are running on distinct, unconnected databases and therefore you'll need to have a login created on the server you wish to use. Even if you use the same login credentials, they are different accounts.
No. Your subscription is valid per account (bookmarkset). You may install the BookmarkSync client on as many computers as you wish.
No, I'm sorry, it's not. I paid for the 'lifetime' license too. When the system crashed, the original SyncIT website closed down and it's developers left the project to the open-source community. BookmarkSync is not affiliated in anyway with the original website or it's developers. BookmarkSync is a PHP port from the original ASP version that has taken months of work to bring it back online. It's running on multiple dedicated servers that I've made available to everyone for a nominal annual subscription fee. This seems to be the best model to ensure the continued operation of this great service for everyone.
We have had a few users discover that a corrupted bookmark in Windows XP will cause BookmarkSync to halt during the installation process. This often occurs during step 3.
Get the latest version of the client software. Version 2.0 solves this issue.
Each user was able to discover the corrupted link and correct the problem by
- Copying the contents of their favorites folder to a temporary directory.
- Deleting the contents of the original favorites folder. (Here is where the corrupted link show up) Make sure that you are able to delete any troublesome links.
- Copy all of your favorites from the temporary folder back into the original favorites folder. This fix works for both client versions 1.5 and 1.6.5.
Login to Avantgo's web site and click the "My Account" tab in the grey area on the right of the screen. Under "Account Management Tasks" -> "Subscriptions", click the link titled: Create a custom channel.
Now to the right of the screen are the fields that need to be completed.
- Title your channel (i.e. "BookmarkSync").
- Give this location: http://www.sync2it.com/mobile
- Set the channel size at 20k, (I did not download the bookmarks, and I'm only using 1k. If you decide to download the bookmarks the channel size required will vary.)
- Set the link depth at 4.
- Choose "include images", and to not allow following off-site links.
- Selected a refresh on every sync.
Now sync your Palm and you will have this channel in your list of options. To use this channel as a means to record bookmarks offline for syncing later:
- Enter your BookmarkSync login information
- Add your bookmarks
- Finish by clicking the logout button on the channel's home page.
(Note: If you don't do this, the next time you sync your Avantgo, you will get a server time-out error. But clicking the logout fixes that... and it seems as though Avantgo's Forms Manager app sends the offline forms in the same order as entered into the Palm.)
Thank you very much to Matthew Page for these instructions!
If you have a lot of bookmarks and haven't put them in folders, sync2it can't display them in the multi-column popup menu displayed when you click on the Sync2IT taskbar icon. The current versions of BookmarkSync fix this problem by displaying bookmarks in a single column, similar to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
The quickest fix to this problem is to place top-level bookmarks into folders.
Annual subscriptions are encouraged because they better allow me to allocate resources and predict support levels for the website over the coming year. If you leave your subscription active, you can continue to subscribe to the BookmarkSync service at a reduced annual rate. However, some users prefer to use Paypal but not keep a subscription active. Cancelling your subscription on Paypal will not affect your license to BookmarkSync. Your annual service will remain in effect until it expires even if you cancel your Paypal Subscription.
Subscriptions are managed by Paypal and therefore must be created and cancelled from their website. To cancel an existing subscription, navigate to Paypal and login to your user account.
- Click the My Account tab.
- Click the History tab.
- Select Show 'Subscriptions' Within 'The past year' and click Search
- Click the Details of the subscription to 'Secure Data Systems'.
- Click Cancel Subscription.
- You have successfully cancelled your subscription.
If you liked the multi-column display, you can revert back by following these steps:
- Right click on the SyncIT taskbar icon
;
- Click on 'Settings...';
- Click on the 'Display' tab.
- Make sure the 'Show columns on bookmark popup menu' box is checked.
- Make sure the popup menu can be displayed, by clicking on the test icon provided or on the *real* taskbar icon.
In a word, no. Only publicly accessible pages that you've bookmarked will appear in search results or in the top lists. None of your personal bookmark information is ever used or displayed and there is no way to trace the bookmark back to you as a user. When you enter a bookmark and it is uploaded to our server, our spider periodically checks to see that the site is still available and uses that information to update your deadlinks pages. While the spider is at the website, it stores the title and any author supplied keywords and descriptions. These are the only bits of information that are included in public searches. None of your private link titles, descriptions or keywords are ever available to the public.
Also, the ticker serves as a useful reminder to new users that bookmarks are in fact going to our web site, and it's a neat way to discover new bits of the Internet. You can also subscribe to this ticker via your favorite 
reader or using your mobile device or cell phone. What is RSS?
The ticker, toplists, and our search engine only looks at sites that meet the following criteria:
- The bookmark must have a URL of the form 'http://...'. So no FTP, TELNET, or MAILTO: links will appear in the ticker or in the search engine.
- The bookmark must not have a question mark '?' in it. Almost all password-based or session-based web sites use the question mark to identify the user.
- The page referenced by the bookmark must be accessible to our site. Our software on our web site tries to connect to the page to get its title. If it cannot connect (because it's on an internal network, behind a firewall, or password protected) it won't show up on the ticker or in the search engine.
- The document's title is used on the ticker, not the name used when you bookmarked the site, so there is no way to trace the bookmark back to you.
The AOL program stores its favorite places in a proprietary file format. BookmarkSync cannot write to this format, so Sync2it will not synchronize with AOL.
We do, however, offer an import utility from a 3rd party vendor. This program will allow you to browse for your AOL profile, and then import the favorite places into your Internet Explorer favorites. If BookmarkSync is running, these favorites will then be synchronized with the rest of your bookmarks.
There are typically two things that go wrong during the initial connection:
- BookmarkSync can't find the correct proxy/firewall settings to use to connect to the Internet; or
- There is a temporary problem with the BookmarkSync web site.
To get connected, follow these steps:
- First, make sure your running the latest version of the BookmarkSync bookmark synchronizer. The latest version as of this writing is Version 1.7.2, updated December 2004. To check which version you have, right click on the
BookmarkSync taskbar icon, and choose "About BookmarkSync...". Go to the web page http://www.sync2it.com/download/ to download the latest version.
- When you're at step 3 in the connect/login wizard, click on the "Connection Settings..." link. This will bring up the Connection Settings window. Use the drop-down box to choose which proxy settings SyncIT should use. Use the "Test" button to make sure you have connectivity with the SyncIT web site.
If your Internet proxy or gateway requires frequent authentication, you may disable automatic bookmark synchronizing. There are two places you can do this:
- When the proxy login window appears, you can clear the "Continue automatic synchronizing" checkbox; or
- Left-click on the BookmarkSync taskbar icon to bring up the popup menu. Clear the "AutoSync" menu checkbox.
When automatic synchronizing is disabled, you can sync your bookmarks by double-clicking on the taskbar icon, or by choosing the "Sync Now!" popup menu item.
The synchronizing software installs itself so it will always be running when you use your computer. Each time Windows starts up, and every time you change your bookmarks, BookmarkSync will attempt to connect to the BookmarkSync web site. If this is bringing up annoying dial-up dialog boxes, you can disable the auto-sync feature. If the auto-sync feature is disabled, you will have to double-click on the BookmarkSync icon for synchronization to occur.
To disable auto-sync, follow these steps:
- Right click on the BookmarkSync icon in the taskbar (it may be gray instead of blue);
- Select the "Auto-sync" checked option on the popup menu.
If you want to stop the software temporarily, follow these steps:
- Right click on the BookmarkSync icon in the taskbar (it may be gray instead of blue);
- Select the "Exit" option on the popup menu.
The software will restart the next time you log in. You can also start it manually, by going into the Windows Start menu through "Programs" to find "BookmarkSync". If you want to stop it permanently, see the next question, How do I uninstall this software?
There is an uninstall utility built into BookmarkSync. It will appear in the BookmarkSync folder within the Programs submenu on the Start menu. The uninstall utility can also be invoked from the Control Panel. Choose "Add/Remove Programs" from the control panel, then look for "BookmarkSync Bookmark Synchronizer".
Note that this will remove all traces of the software. If you share your computer with other BookmarkSync users, you should just remove the icons from the Startup folder in the Programs submenu of the Start menu.
You can remove your profile from our site by visiting: http://www.sync2it.com/common/removeuser.php.
Sync2it has several undelete features. If you think some bookmarks are gone, log into the site, go into the utilities section and click on Undelete, or go to http://www.sync2it.com/bms/undelete.php.
Your Netscape bookmarks are backed up on two separate files in your Netscape profile directory. Look for BOOKMARK.SAV and BOOKMARK.BCK and choose which one has the bookmarks you wish to restore.
Your IE bookmarks are placed in the Windows recycle bin when they are deleted by sync2it. Look in there for any deleted bookmarks.
As of BookmarkSync Version 2.0, the client includes a backup and restore feature. It is recommended that you periodically backup your bookmarks using this utility in addition, the online database will not delete any of your bookmarks until they have been expired at least 6 months.
Mac & Windows OS File/Folder naming rules
Please notify me if you have the slightest doubt about sync2it!
BookmarkSync has been running fine for a long period but all of a sudden it has started crashing during every sync.
BookmarkSync has a history of being very stable, however with the recent new support for Firefox, there have been some new issues introduced that may cause the client to crash. Here are a couple of resources that should help.
Version 2.0 fully supports Unicode.
Get the latest client software update
The Netscape browser saves its bookmark file when it exits. Because of this, the BookmarkSync agent doesn't get immediately notified of changes to the Netscape bookmarks.
To have your Netscape bookmarks safely stored, close all Netscape windows.
When you install a new browser for the first time, BookmarkSync will need to be restarted before your bookmarks will be syncronized. The reason for this is that the BookmarkSync client uses some registery settings to locate the these browsers during startup and these values need to be reinitialized.
To restart BookmarkSync, right click on the BookmarkSync icon and select "Exit". Then navigate to your program files folder and restart BookmarkSync. You can organize your bookmarks as needed using Mozilla's or Firefox's bookmark manager tool.
If you are using Version 2.0 or greater, this issue has been resolved and you do not need to restart the client.
Firefox has had trouble over the years with users losing all of their bookmarks due to a computer crash or otherwise corrupted bookmarks.html file. In an effort to eliminate this problem, the Firefox developers have included at least two backup methods for storing bookmarks.html files.
First, as of Firefox version 1.5, there is a folder titled 'bookmarkbackups' in your user profile directory. Backup copies of your bookmarks.html are occasionally created in this directory. In case a serious problem is encountered, Firefox will automatically restore the most recent bookmark file from this directory.
Second, if the current bookmarks.html file cannot be re-written for whatever reason. (another program such as a virus checker has the file locked for instance), Firefox will begin creating sequential bookmarks.html files ('bookmarks-01.html', 'bookmarks-02.html', 'bookmarks-xx.html') for every modification to your bookmarks. Obviously, this is not a good thing. Once this situation has been created, Firefox doesn't always attempt to correct it and can continue to create these files. Some users have reported thousands of these 'bookmarks-xx.html' files being created.
In an effort to alert you to this condition, BookmarkSync pops up a notification of the situation and asks that it be corrected.
The solution is simple...
- Right-click on the SyncIT tray icon and click on "Program Settings->Browsers". Now, click on the 'View' to the right of the Firefox Browser. This will take you to your bookmarks profile directory.
- Disable automatic synchronization in SyncIT by unchecking the menu option. This will prevent BookmarkSync from trying to sync when the bookmarks.html file is modified.
- Close all running copies of Firefox, otherwise they will overwrite your work.
- Rename the existing Bookmarks.html file to something else such as 'bookmarks.html.bak'
- Find freshest copy of your bookmarks by sorting on the file dates. This is usually the highest numbered 'bookmarks-xx.html' file. Rename this file to 'bookmarks.html'.
You can now re-enable automatic synchronization and restart Firefox.
Since this situation was caused by some other program leaving a lock on the bookmarks.html file, it may reoccur from time to time. If it does, at least you know what is causing it and can determine which program might be at fault. Sometimes it's just a transient condition caused by a program or even Firefox itself locking up and not clearing a file lock and therefore it may not ever reappear.
Here are a couple of links at bugzilla that further describe the condition.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271883
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=294584
With the recent release of Firefox 2.0, this appears to still be an issue.
The client is warning me when I try to close the application, what should I do?
Beginning with version 2.0 of the client, you are prevented from closing the application during a synchronization operation. This is to help prevent data loss in the event that the client is writing out one of your bookmarksets.
In the event that you receive this warning and still desire to exit the application, you may do so by right-clicking on the menu bar and selecting "Task Manager->Processes". Then selected the application title "BookmarkSync.exe" and click on the "End Process" button.
There have been a few reports of Internet Explorer 7 not showing links that are clearly present in the links folder. This appears to be an issue with Internet Explorer 7 not detecting changes to the favorites folder properly. If your links are not being shown, you can easily force IE 7 to re-read the favorites folder by right clicking on your browser favorites links folder and selecting 'Sort by Name'. Your links folder will be restored as usual.
