SyncPlaces SupportHow to install WebDAV on specific web servers is beyond this site. However, it is pretty straightforward for most servers.
With Apache 2.0 and above just follow the instructions in the standard manual. But in case you're struggling with Apache 2.0 here's an example of what to put in your httpd.conf:
LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so DavLockDB "C://tmp/DAVLock" DAVMinTimeout 600 <Directory "C:/webroot/bookmarks"> Dav on #These four lines are required for authentication #Uncomment them only once you have it working #AuthType Basic #AuthName Bookmarks #AuthUserFile "C:/Apache2.0/conf/dav.password" #Require valid-user </Directory>
Assuming your web site is located in the "C:/webroot" folder this will enable the bookmarks folder for use with SyncPlaces. Once it is working you can then uncomment the 4 lines indicated and add some authentication details into the dav.password file.
If you have your own web site with a third party then check to see if this comes with FTP for uploading pages. If so then this may work with SyncPlaces to allow you to upload your bookmarks to your own web site.
It is also worth checking to see if your ISP or email provider provides online disk space. In many cases these use WebDAV. If yours does then it may be worth checking to see if it is suitable for use with SyncPlaces
There are also a number of sites that provide free online disk space, either on their own or as part of other services. One that I can recommend that works well with SyncPlaces is GMX. This is a free, no strings attached, email service that also provides disk space. You may find the email part useful, but if not then sign up for this using ficticious details and completely ignore the email part. For myself in the UK the following SyncPlaces settings worked:
If this doesn't work for you it could be that the "Host" is different in your country. If so then try looking in the GMX File Manager help for how to connect a Network Drive using Windows
As you'd expect the XBEL produced by BSS does not include any of the new features introduced in Firefox 3. So if you synchronise with BSS you're going to lose all of that information (in particular tags, annotations, queries) as well as things BSS never supported (date added and modified). Other features such as keywords and livemarks are preserved, and the unsorted/unfiled bookmarks and tags folders from Firefox 3 are imported into BSS as normal folders.
When working with BSS you may see some errors when importing/downloading into BSS. You'll probably see a 'Delete Toolbar' message because the Firefox 3 toolbar has a different name and so the old one is deleted. Strangely, this message also appears even when merging into BSS.
You will probably also get a nasty looking message about RDFService errors. This is because BSS used RDF ids for each folder/bookmark etc, but the Firefox Places system doesn't use this anymore so this information isn't there when importing/downloading into BSS. However, it should still work fine though, so you can just ignore this error.
If your browser has problems when you use the 'Receive on startup' option it is generally due to conflicts with other extensions. SyncPlaces uses the officially sanctioned method of registering for browser startup events . But this method is poorly documented and has limitations, so many extensions use various algorithms to detect when the browser has started, which can cause conflicts with SyncPlaces.
On the Advanced/Workarounds tab there is a 'Startup detection' section. If you are having problems then try using the 'Compatible' option. This tells SyncPlaces to also use an alternative mechanism to detect when the browser has started, and so may reduce the potential for conflicts with other extensions.
Warning: Using the 'Compatible' option when you do not have any problems may cause side-effects to occur. Also when you first use this option you may have to restart the browser a couple of times before it operates properly.
SyncPlaces stores passwords with all your other passwords in the Firefox password system. They are stored with a "Site" name of "chrome://syncplaces"
If you find that your passwords are not being stored, then check you have Firefox set to remember passwords for sites:
Unfortunately, I've found that Firefox has very poor support for FTP servers, and the official way of communicating with them does not always work, especially if you are using a proxy server like Microsoft's ISA server. But I have found some older methods from Firefox 1 that may work for you, and some tips even if you don't have FTP issues:
Note: When testing the options below try without the 'Send Safely' and 'Only ... if changed' options, and also do not 'Send HTML' or 'Send XBEL'. Once you have everything working then you can try using these options again.
If you look on the Advanced/Workarounds tab you will see two sections: 'Receiving mechanism' and 'Sending mechanism'. The default for both sending and receiving is 'Normal'.
If Firefox hangs or crashes when sending or receiving (proxy servers like Microsoft's ISA server can cause this), then try 'Proxy fix' for both Sending and Receiving.
If you cannot receive bookmarks then try 'Old' in the Receiving section. If you cannot send bookmarks then try 'Old' in the Sending section. Both use an older system for communicating with the server, which can sometimes be unreliable. If you still have problems then check the sections below for more help.
When Firefox connects to an FTP server it does not close the connection when it has finished. Also it may open extra connections for the HTML, XBEL, JSON, and SHA1 files that may be sent. So if you have many browsers connecting at the same time you may run out of connections. There are two things you can try: In Firefox on the about:config page you can set "network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout" to be a low number as the default is a huge 300 seconds! I set mine to 0 and it works for me, but you may need a higher number if you have a slow connection. Another option is to set the 'timeout' for FTP connections on your FTP server to be a small number. With Filezilla Server I use 5 seconds and it works for me, but again you may need a bigger number for a slower connection.
Common pitfalls to avoid are:
SyncPlaces is pretty dumb when it comes to networking and simply uses what Firefox provides. This means that if Firefox can't do it, SyncPlaces definitely can't. But it does mean you can try things in your browser first. So open up your browser and try out the following:
Create a plain text file with the word 'test' in. This should have the same name as the JSON file on the 'Server' tab and be placed where you were expecting your bookmarks to be saved. Then try to access this file directly in your browser using a uri of this form: file://path_to_json_file. For example on Windows enter something like: file://M:\shared_folder\syncplaces.json. On Linux or Mac you may have something like: file:///shared_folder/syncplaces.json.
If Firefox can't read the test file, then SyncPlaces won't be able to, so you'll need to solve whatever is stopping Firefox from reading the file first.
If you have a Web server and an error page is returned then this will be displayed in a new tab, so you can see what's gone wrong.
If you cannot send your bookmarks to the server then first of all check the settings on the 'Server' tab are correct: Check that you are using the correct hostname/ip address, and if necessary add a port number if you're not using the default (e.g. www.yourhost.com:8080).
Check that you have set up your FTP/Web Server to have permission to read from and write to the folder that will store the JSON file, and are allowed to create new files and read them via ftp/http(s). If you're using an FTP server then try swapping between PASV and Active connections to see if this works for you.
If you have an FTP server then check you can send files using an FTP client on the same computer as your browser. Again try swapping between PASV and Active to see if this makes any difference
Check that you have set up any firewalls and/or proxy servers between your browser and your server to allow files to be sent/received. Ensure there's nothing stopping files with mime-type 'application/json' or with the suffix '.json', for example. If you're unsure then try using SyncPlaces with a browser on your server to see if by-passing these allows it to work.
On your server, create a plain text file with the word 'test' in. This should have the same name as the JSON file on the 'Server' tab and be placed on your server where you were expecting your bookmarks to be saved. Now follow the instructions in the next section to see if you can see this file in Firefox.
If you think that you're sending okay, check that you really have sent your bookmarks correctly by ensuring the file at the JSON path on your server exists and has an up to date timestamp. If not then read the previous section first.
SyncPlaces is pretty dumb when it comes to networking and simply uses what Firefox provides. This means that if Firefox can't do it, SyncPlaces definitely can't. But it does mean you can try things in your browser first. So open up your browser and try out the following (replace http:// with ftp:// as appropriate):
Open a browser tab and enter a url of the form: http://[user[:password]@]yourhost[:port]/path_to_json_file using the details you've put on the 'Server' tab. So if you don't have a username and password use e.g.: http://yourhost/syncplaces.json. If you need a username but no password use e.g.: http://user@yourhost/syncplaces.json. If you need a username and password use e.g.: http://user:password@yourhost/syncplaces.json.
When you enter the appropriate URL your JSON file should appear in your browser. If it does then double check the settings on your 'Server' tab, because SyncPlaces should receive your bookmarks. If it does but your problem is sending bookmarks, then I'm sorry but you're back at square one: It looks like your server is not set up correctly, or you have a firewall/proxy that is stopping your bookmarks being sent
If your server prompts you for you login details, then it looks like you've not entered them correctly into the 'Server' tab or the URL you've just tried.
If you have a firewall or proxy server that prompts you to enter login details, then you've had it for the time being because SyncPlaces doesn't yet support this situation.
If you're still having problems then reading the next section may help ...
If you ever have an alert window appear with a horrible looking message such as
[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) ...
then email this to me for investigation.
If you're having problems then the first place to check is the 'Error Console' on the Tool menu. Ensure there are no messages in there relating to SyncPlaces or that appear when you use SyncPlaces. In order to see all the messages that can appear in the console you may have to change some Firefox settings: Open a new tab with a URL of "about:config". Scroll down until you see 'javascript.options.showInConsole'. Ensure this is set to 'true'. If there are any obvious messages then email them to me for investigation.
You can select where backups and temporary files are stored using the 'Select folder to backup to' option on the Advanced tab. By default this is inside your profile folder, e.g. on Windows this is "C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<uniqueid>.default\syncplaces\". SyncPlaces creates several files in this folder, then main ones being: syncplaces_backup.json, syncplaces_send.json, and syncplaces_received.json.
syncplaces_backup.json is a backup of your bookmarks taken when you click the Receive button or the Backup button.
syncplaces_send.json is a copy of what is just about to be sent to your server. So if you're having problems sending and this isn't being created, then there may be something wrong with SyncPlaces (check the error console as described above).
syncplaces_received.json is what was received from your web/ftp server. So if you have a problem receiving bookmarks then have a look for this file. If this doesn't exist or has an old timestamp then the communication with your server must have failed (see previous sections for help). If it does exist then try opening it in a text editor to see if it contains a JSON formatted file. If this file is truncated or corrupted you may have network problems.
In general comparing syncplaces_received.json with the JSON file on your server and also with the syncplaces_send.json and syncplaces_backup.json files may help you work out if there is a network problem.
If you have an error when you receive bookmarks there is a simple way of working out which bookmark(s) are causing the problem.
On the Advanced tab use the 'Select folder to synchronise' option to send/receive just part of your bookmarks. By starting at the top folder (try the Toolbar first and then the Main bookmarks) and working your way down you should be able to find out in which folder the problem lies. When you have found a folder that has the problem use the Bookmarks Organiser in Firefox to move half of the bookmarks into a different folder and try again. By repeating this you should then be able to quickly find a bookmark that is causing the problem. You can then send me the syncplaces_received.json for this one bookmark and I can see what is wrong with it.
Do not worry if you find that there are lots of bookmarks causing problems. Just send me any one of these to look at. If you find that when you use the 'Select folder to synchronise' option you do not have any problems anymore, then move any bookmarks in the 'Unsorted' folder into the main bookmarks using the Bookmarks Organiser and try again. If it is still okay then let me know because the problem may be with one of the 'special' Firefox bookmarks/folders.
