Browser Favourites List Backup Including Icons For Bookmarks/Icons For Favorites

If you are anything like me, you probably have lots of sites that are bookmarked or added to your favourites list in Internet Explorer (or even Firefox, Chrome or Safari, or whatever it is you use as your default web browser. I do use all of the first three actually, but 90% of the time I just stick with Internet Explorer as every old website out there is guaranteed to be compatible with it – plus I am less used to the other browsers and old habits die hard!)

As time goes by you are no doubt adding to all of your favourite websites into the favourites list in your browser on a daily basis, to make visiting your favourites sites much quicker. This means that your bookmarks list is getting bigger and bigger all the time.

But is it really there forever? Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that a site you add to your internet bookmarks lists will ever vanish from your browser on its own. Nor am I suggesting that you might ever delete it by a clumsy mistake on your part (none of my readers are clumsy, now are you!?)

I am actually suggesting something far worse and problematic could happen to your computer altogether. Either a virus or some other unknown fault that occurs and leaves you unable to even start your computer, or something that leaves your pc basically functioning, but not well enough to make a backup of your internet favourites.

If you do find yourself in this situation, you might well have to reinstall your operating system. And if you do have to reinstall your operating system, one of the worse things about it is having to add all your bookmarked sites back into your browser of choice. Which is why it would be wise to back up your favourite website list now, before that ever happens.

(If it has already happened, don’t worry, just read on as I have something that might help a little for you lower down this post)

The process of backing up your favourite website list is called “exporting”, and is something you really need to get done every once in a while. Just how often you need to do it depends on how often you update your favourites list.

If you don’t do it often enough you will find that you have a list that is full of old sites you no longer wish to visit, and any new ones you recently bookmarked would not even be in the list at all, which would rather make for a useless backup, I think you would agree.

Well fear not!

Introducing the “Nearly Ultimate Favourite Websites List Backup”, which as the name suggests is a list of bookmarked websites/favourite websites (whichever name you prefer to use) that almost anyone would find useful, especially those seeking to make money online, as it includes all of the websites that you really should be visiting.

(The reason it’s called the “Nearly Ultimate Favourite Websites List Backup” rather than the “Ultimate Favourite Websites List Backup” is simply because there will always be a load of great websites out there I have yet to add to it, and so it will always be a “nearly” list!)

The list is primarily aimed at those in the UK as that is where I am based, but really anyone can use it, as most of the websites in the list will simply redirect to your own local site whenever you try and visit one that is outside your own country. Most websites are clever enough to know if you are visiting a version of their site that is located in a different country to the one you are currently browsing from and will offer you one click access to your own country version whenever possible.

All you need to do is download the zipped file, extract the file, and then in your browser of choice click on “Import favourites from file” (or whatever text they use for this term) and direct your browser to import your favourites from the file you just unzipped.

After you have done this you will see that you have a favourites list that includes most of the most popular and useful websites out there – especially if you want a list of websites that’s useful for making money!

Naturally after checking your favourites list you will see some useful websites that I have missed, so please leave a comment below if you see that I really should have included a useful website into the list and I will make sure to get that done and upload a new version of the file with your recommended website in it.

The truly great thing about this list is that it already contains the individual websites own icons for bookmarks (Known as Favicons in the trade!) as the little graphic for the shortcut to the sites. It is actually quite difficult to create these “icons for favorites”.

Normally the way that browsers save these little graphics would require you to visit each website so that they can then save the Favicons. This website favourite list backup actually contains the link to the Favicon on each site, so the icon is there in your bookmarks immediately!

The way I did it was to actually search for the Favicon of every site in the list. It took ages I can tell you. Luckily most of the time the Favicons are only in the root of the domain. For example something this:

http://www.yearn2earncash.com/favicon.ico

Though sometimes the icons were also placed somewhere else, like in an images folder. For example something this:

http://sampleresources.com/images/favicon.ico

Then there were also a few really difficult to find Favicons out there were the icon was in a location you would never, ever dream of. Just take a look at this location of the Favicon from the digg.com website:

http://cdn1.diggstatic.com/img/favicon.ico

Anyway I have done all the hard work for you in creating you a list of website favourites with icons included, so all you need to do is try it out and let me know what you think needs adding to it and I will be sure to get on with it!

Download the “Nearly Ultimate Favourite Websites List Backup” file here now and let me know which websites you would have expected to be included in your comments below.

It will work for most of the popular browsers (with a little tweaking as explained below!) and will no doubt save you a ton of time setting up your browser the way you like it again.

You can of course drag and drop the favourites/bookmarks into the order you like them (or remove some entirely, if you like!) but be careful if you edit the code as you don’t want to risk removing the icons that I struggled so valiantly to find for you.

(Quick tip for chrome users – You cannot import all your old favourites directly into chrome, you have to go through another browser like Internet Explorer first. In other words import the favourites list into Internet explorer first, then immediately after you will need to open up chrome and import them from Internet explorer to Chrome. To do that click on the wrench icon to access your “Options”, after this click on “Personal stuff”, then alongside “Browsing data” click on “Import data from another browser” and then make sure that “Microsoft Internet Explorer” is selected and tick the radio button next to “Favorites/Bookmarks” to import the favourite website list from there.)

Download the “Nearly Ultimate Favourite Websites List Backup” file here now.

Tags: Icons For Bookmarks, Icons For Favorites