Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently asked questions about Ma.gnolia’s social bookmarking service

Questions

Answers

What is Ma.gnolia?

Ma.gnolia is a website that allows you to both easily store your favorite bookmarks online, and find new websites based on what other people just like you have suggested. It’s that simple. Back to Top

Why is your url name so funny?

Funny? Really? Ma.gnolia has two meanings. You probably already know that a magnolia is a flower. Well, we think that the way a flower blossoms is a good way to think about how information grows within the Ma.gnolia network. We know that the dot in the middle is a little different than a normal url, but hey, we like to be different! Back to Top

Why does your site have ads? Can I get rid of them?

Ma.gnolia.com display ads on some pages to users of our free service. When our Pro service launches, subscribers will not see any ads, in addition to having access to more features. We understand that ads are not everyone’s favorite thing to look at. We have chosen to use site advertising because we are dedicated to ensuring that Ma.gnolia is a service that can survive and grow. To do so means that we need to pay for stuff, like servers, bandwidth, the odd meal – that sort of thing. We hope you’ll at least find the ads non-offensive, and we’ve taken great pains to integrate them into the design gracefully. If we can do better, please let us know. Back to Top

Can you give me an example of how social bookmarking works?

Sure. Let’s say you’re a Ma.gnolia member and you find a website you really like that sells puppy dogs. You can come to Ma.gnolia and save that website to your list of bookmarks. When you save that website, Ma.gnolia will ask you what “tags” you want to apply to the website. The website is about puppy dogs, and you like puppy dogs, so you “tag” the website as “puppy dogs.”

Then, months later, you realize that you need some new puppy dogs. If you go to a regular search engine and search for “puppy dogs,” you may not find that puppy dog site you really liked. This happens all the time because search engine results change every day. But if you go to Ma.gnolia and search your bookmarks for “puppy dogs”, you’ll immediately find the websites that you marked as being good sites for puppy dogs. You save time by not searching for the same thing twice!

But why do all the work yourself? You can also search for websites that other Ma.gnolia users have tagged with ‘puppy dogs’. That way you’ll only get sites that other puppy dog lovers thought were good enough to save. By just saving the bookmarks you like and tagging them, Ma.gnolia users help each other without even trying! Back to Top

What is a “tag”?

A tag is just a word or series of words that tells you what a website is about. Think of it like a label or the word you’d search for if you were trying to find a website again. Ma.gnolia does a lot with those little tags you give to bookmarks. Back to Top

What is a tag cloud?

A tag cloud is an efficient and eye-catching way of seeing all of the tags associated with a user or a site. All of the tags are listed alphabetically, but the most popular tags appear bigger so you can see what the most popular terms are. You may want to browse our tutorial section. We have some hints in there on how to use tag clouds in the Ma.gnolia system.Back to Top

How is Ma.gnolia different from Del.icio.us?

The best way to answer this is to check out our discussion of How Ma.gnolia is Different in our tutorial. Back to Top

Can I import my bookmarks from Del.icio.us (or BlinkList, or Furl, or Simpy??)

Currently we only support importing from Del.icio.us, and you can find out how to do that under the Support & Tools section. Based on user requests, we will add support for importing from other online services as Ma.gnolia grows. If you want to import from a service we don’t support, tell us using the link at the bottom of the page.

Please note that you need to be logged in as registered member in order to access bookmark importing tools. Back to Top

Why can’t other people see my saved copies of web pages?

Ma.gnolia prevents the sharing of saved web page copies out of respect for the law and the policies of the source web site. Many websites worth bookmarking have content copying restrictions, and some use subscriber logins to allow access to content. If we allow everyone to view saved copies, we would be violating the rules and hurting the business of other websites. Back to Top

How do I find Ma.gnolia members who are not yet on my contact list?

To find Ma.gnolia members who are not on your contact list, you need to start a search from the People page. In the search box, type the first name, last name, user name or email address of the person you want to find. Back to Top

How can I speed up the tag suggestion list in Safari?

Safari users might notice that the suggestion list for adding tags becomes very slow sometimes. This is caused by a bug in Safari that we can’t control, but we do know that just re-starting Safari will speed things up for you. This problem typically affects people when they have had Safari running for several days. Back to Top

How do I add bookmarks to a group?

Send To Group This icon appears beside every bookmark. Click it, and you?ll be able to choose the group you want to send the bookmark to. Remember that each bookmark sent to a group is a copy, so you can customize the title, description, rating and tags for the bookmark as it appears in the group. Back to Top

Why does the thumbnail picture for some bookmarks look wrong?

Ma.gnolia uses a third-party service to create the small images of saved copies of web pages. Sometimes the service gives us an out of date image of a web page, or an image from another part of the web site. Although this isn’t desirable, there’s not much Ma.gnolia can do to correct it at this time. We can guarantee, however, that the full size saved copy is exactly what you saw when you bookmarked the page, because we make that copy ourselves. Back to Top

The web is more than just HTML files! What types of URLs or protocols can be marked in Ma.gnolia?

Ma.gnolia allows you to mark the following types of URLs for your favorite web content:

http://
https://
feed://
ftp://
rtp://
rtsp://
mms://
itms://
webcal://
textmate://

What browsers does Ma.gnolia support?

Ma.gnolia is built with web standards so that we can provide the most consistent experience in any kind of browser. However, because not all web browsers properly support standards, some don’t work so well. Here is our official list of browsers that work properly with Ma.gnolia:

IE6 and up
Safari (with at least one issue related to bookmarking non-HTML files)
Camino
FireFox
OmniWeb

Opera does work, but with some issues. Back to Top

Why am I having trouble bookmarking non-HTML files like movies or PDFs in Safari?

There is a problem in Safari that causes the bookmarklet to fail when trying to mark a file that isn’t a standard web page, such as a movie file, an mp3 file or a PDF. The symptoms are that the title shows up as ‘About: Blank’ in Ma.gnolia, and the history of Safari’s ‘Back’ button is lost. We have reported the problem to Apple, but until they fix this issue Safari will not be able to add bookmarks to non-HTML files using a bookmarklet.

There are two ways around this problem until it is fixed in Safari:

The first way is just to copy and paste the website address into the Add Bookmark tool found on Ma.gnolia bookmark pages.

The second way is to use FireFox or Internet Explorer to add bookmarks to Ma.gnolia with the bookmarklet, which you can find under Support & Tools. Back to Top

What’s a ‘Lite’ Feed?

Lite feeds are just like regular feeds, but they contain less information. Lite feeds can be added to web page templates, bringing continually updated content from Ma.gnolia. Like regular feeds, Lite feeds are delivered in RSS and Atom formats. Back to Top

What does the HTML output for the link roll look like?

<div class="magnolia-linkroll">
  <h2 class="magnolia-linkroll-title">Marked in Magnolia</h2>
  <dl>
      <dt class="magnolia-mark">
        <a href="http://link.com/" title="Visit http://link.com/" class="magnolia-link">
          Bookmark Title
        </a>
      </dt>
      <dd class="magnolia-description">
        Description
      </dd>
    </dl>
</div>

What Character encoding does Ma.gnolia support?

Ma.gnolia supports UTF-8 character encoding. It is possible for members to see improper characters in tags and bookmark data when using browsers that use a non-UTF-8 input mode, or after importing bookmarks that have non-UTF-8 characters. There is no automated fix for this problem at this time, so manual editing will be needed to correct non-UTF-8 characters. Back to Top

Can I use an ad blocker on your site?

We think our ads don’t impose too much on the eyes, but if you do you are free to use an ad blocker. Be advised that some add blockers such as floppymoose can interfere with Ma.gnolia and prevent you from seeing control buttons. We have no control over this, and do not intend this behavior. Turning off the ad blocker for Ma.gnolia will ensure you can see everything that you should be able to click. Back to Top

Is my information available to everybody?

Absolutely not! We’ve worked hard to make it so that others can see only those things about you that you want them to know, and we give you the ability to make any of your bookmarks private so only you can see them. Please read our privacy policy for complete information. Back to Top

How does Ma.gnolia treat controlled content when making saved copies?

Ma.gnolia only makes a saved copy of a web page when directed to do so by a user. We do not crawl the web and therefore you will not find us checking robots.txt. We do, however, watch and respect the ‘no cache’ meta tag should a member attempt to make a saved copy of a protected web page. Additionally, we do not cache images, CSS or Javascript in our saved copies. Back to Top

What if I still have questions?

Just ask us! We’re here to answer any questions you may have. Back to Top