We Got Served

Do you use Firefox? Want to be able to sync your bookmarks between computers and don’t want to use someone else’s server or to have to set up another server on your system? Xmarks (formally known as FoxMarks) allows you to sync your bookmarks, and recently rolled out a version that is designed for using your own server.

Basically, they cut out everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary to just sync bookmarks and passwords.

What you will need

• WebFolders4WHS Add-In
• Firefox with Xmarks “BYOS Beta” Extension installed
• Remote Access to Windows Home Server

What to Do

You’ll need to enable and configure your Remote Access website first.

Once you’ve verified that it is working, download and install the WebFolders4WHS Add-In on your server.

Once that has finished and you’ve logged back into your server’s console, open up the page for “Web Folders”. It still won’t work right now, as the components are not installed or configured yet, so click the “Setup” button here, and then click the “Setup” button on the settings page that it brings up. It will bring up a couple of pages, warning and such.

It will  ask you what you want to use for the web folder name. Note this setting, as it is the folder for the URL that we will be using in a bit.

After the Add-In has finished installing, you’ll need to use Advanced Admin Console or Remote Desktop to open “Internet Information Services” located in Administrative Tools.

You should see the window open up, and the computer’s name appear on the left side.

Right click on the server, and click properties. At the bottom of the box, click on “MIME Types…”. On this page, click “New…” and for extension, fill out “.json” and for the MIME Type, fill out “application/json”.

Click all the “OK”s, and then reboot your server. (The WebServer service needs to restart, and this is the easiest way to do this).

Once that’s done, log back into the console, and open the “Web Folders” page.

“Web Enable” the appropriate user folder(s) here. Remember your web share name? Good, you’ll need it now. If not, click on the Setup button here, and check the “Web Shared Folder” name, as that is what we want right now (default is “WebFoldersShare”).

Once this is done, navigate Firefox, or another web browser to “https://myserver.homeserver.com/WebFoldersShare/“. (Replace myserver with your remotes access identifier)

You should be prompted for a user name and password. Enter the credentials for your user account on the server, and you should be treated with a list of the “Web Enabled” folders that you have access to. Right click on your user account’s folder (should be your user name) and click “Copy Link Location”.

Now, install the XMarks “Build Your Own Server” extension.

Once you’ve installed it and restarted Xmarks, you’ll be prompted to go to the settings or to just cancel. Well, what are you waiting for! Click on “Go to Settings”.

Here you will see a page with spaces to specify a username, password, bookmark URL and password URL. Use the same user name and password you use for the server. You will have to specify a file ending with “.json” for this to work.

Paste the URL from above to both the bookmark URL and the password URL. Add “bookmark.json” to the bookmark URL, and “password.json” to the password URL.

After everything is filled out, click “Synchronize Now”, and everything should go fine.

Done

Now your bookmarks are synced with your personal Xmarks server! Enjoy and abuse.

Additional Info

If you want to sync your passwords too, open the Xmarks’ settings page and go to the “Sync” page. Check the “Passwords” box. This will immediately bring up a page to create your “PIN” or to enter your previous PIN. This pin is an encryption key that encrypts the password file.

Also, if you use NoScript like I do, you can set it to use a bookmark for the configuration settings and sync that on all the computers that use this set of bookmarks too!