LinkAce

The LinkAce web application is not about synchronizing the existing bookmarks, but about an independent collection of bookmarks for later evaluation and archiving. A Raspberry Pi is all you need for this. I used a Proxmox container in testing. LinkAce uses PHP and requires a database in the background. You can choose between MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or SQLite. The fastest way to set up LinkAce is through Docker Compose.

But before I get to the installation, I will first look at what LinkAce aims to do and how it goes about it. The intention of the German open source developer Kevin Woblick [8] is to make it easier for users to store, archive, mark, classify, and retrieve bookmarks. LinkAce's interface is reduced to the bare essentials, well structured and clearly laid out (Figure 7).

Figure 7: LinkAce's standard interface clearly displays the most recentl links as well as an overview of links, lists, and tags. A broken link will have a red icon.

Clear Cut

The app offers three ways to add new URLs. First, the existing bookmarks in the browsers can be imported as HTML. You can also enter URLs directly in the interface (Figure 7). There is also a bookmarklet that you can drag into your web browser's bookmarks bar to interactively store the URLs of the web pages you visit in the database.

LinkAce then takes care of the saved URLs. It will also perform a periodic Line Check if enabled (Figure 8). If a link is no longer available or has been moved, you will be notified and given the details. In addition, saved links can be backed up to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (Figure 9) [9]. All saved links can be exported as HTML, imported into a browser, or kept as a backup. Other supported backup targets include the commercial AWS [10] and S3 [11].

Figure 8: Clicking on All Links shows you an overview of all saved links with a thumbnail of the corresponding web page.

Figure 9: You can share, edit, delete, send to the Wayback Machine, or add a note to an opened link. The history for this link is displayed bottom left.

Tags and Lists

Tags and lists are used to classify links. Lists serve the purpose of bundling multiple links relating to a specific topic (Figure 10), while tags are used for general categorization. LinkAce also lets you enable optional guest access; the guest can see all links that you do not classify as private. Access can be controlled separately for each link, tag, and list.

Figure 10: Clicking on Lists shows all the lists you have created so far; lists can be filtered, edited, or deleted.

Another way to share links is through link sharing, which is currently available for 20 different services. With an API key for the LinkAce API, the app can also be connected to other tools, which can then access and edit the data in LinkAce.