How to: Export, Import and Migrate Your Delicious Bookmarks

It was announced today that Yahoo is shutting down the popular social bookmarking service Delicious.  So we thought we’d help you out with some solutions to export the bookmarks to other services.

Users have a few different choices. You can choose to export your bookmarks into an html file and import them into your browser or directly import using services like Diigo, Xmarks and Faviki.

Export Your HTML

After logging into Delicious users can export the bookmarks along with their tags into a single html file.  This file can then be added to most browsers by opening the bookmarks tool bar and locating the “import “ feature.  On Firefox an import can be achieved by going to Bookmarks > Bookmarks toolbar > click on the icon with the star> import.

Delicious mentions..
If you choose the option to include your tags, they will be in your export even if you don’t see them on the page — you can view the source of the file to make sure your tags are there. Also note that if you have created tag bundles, they will not be preserved in your exported file. This is a limitation of the export file format.

Choose Your Service

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With Delicious leaving, you might want to fill the void by signing to up one of the following bookmark services. Each one of these services will import your current Delicious bookmarks. We’ve picked out five that we think you’ll love, and we’ll walk you through importing your links to each of them.

Xmarks

Xmarks integrates with your browser and helps you to keep bookmarks safely backed up –including Delicious bookmarks.  Xmarks can sync information across the following supported browsers; Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari.

To import Delicious bookmarks users simply log-in and go to the web portal http://my.xmarks.com.  After locating the “tools” option in the menu select import bookmarks from Delicious.  Now, there is one problem with using this method because there’s a limit on the number of public bookmarks you can import.  If you have more than 100, your best bet is importing the html file into your browser ( as we mentioned above ) and then syncing Xmarks with the browser.

Diigo

Diigo is a bookmarking service and more. This service will allow you to highlight text and attach notes to webpages or create sticky notes.  And, it also gives users the option to import Delicious bookmarks.

You have two options here. You can import the html file or you can punch in your delicious account details and import directly. The problem here is that due to frequency limitations on Delicious’ API,  if you try to import all of the bookmarks at once your request may be denied. Again, importing the html file may save you some frustration.

Pinboard

Pinboard is another great alternative to using Delicious. This service is a low-noise, simple, bookmarking site that will enable you to import your Delicious html file.  To do this just go to the settings in your Pinboard account and choose the file.  After that the import will begin.

Mister Wong

Mister Wong is a straight-forward bookmarking service to share and save websites. It imports quite a few different services and browsers including Twitter (links), Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and Delicious. Mister Wong gives you two options; upload the Delicious html file or directly import using your Delicious log in.

Historio.us

Historio.us is delightfully lightweight, simple, nothing fancy, many of the things that are beautiful about Pinboard, but it has the ability to bookmark in a flash and be able to search for ANY word in the pages you’ve bookmarked.

So how to import? Quite simple. Export your delicious bookmarks as per the above instructions and then import the file into Historio.us by visiting settings, then import/export. I’d provide the link but its custom to your account name, so http://yourusername.historio.us/add/.

Faviki

Faviki is a bookmarking tool that allows users to bookmark web pages using Wikipedia terms. With this service, all users use the same tags which makes searching bookmarks really easy.

After logging in to Faviki you will see an import feature on the top of the page. The import feature will ask you for the delicious ID & password and will begin the process. Unlike other services we’ve seen, Faviki gives users control over tags before the import by allowing “tag editing”. Unfortunately it doesn’t happen right away, it appears to take a few days but when it’s complete Faviki will send you a confirmation email.

Not Delicious But Still Tasty

I’m sad to see Delicious go but like any service there are a lot of sweet alternatives out there. Do you know of a great bookmarking service? I’d love to hear about it, please post your tips in the comments. Additionally, there’s been a call from the community to keep Delicious open source. What are your thoughts?