As a web developer, Firefox has proven itself a reliable tool not only when it comes to editing sites, but also in day-to-day internet browsing. If you're like me and you own multiple computers, you run Firefox on every one of those computers; you also probably face the problem of keeping your settings the same between computers. Today, I'm going to show you how to address the problem of keeping your bookmarks synchronized between computers using the magic of the internet.

This solution requires three things

1. Two computers, each running Firefox
2. An FTP server (optional, but necessary for this guide)
3. The Firefox add-on "Foxmarks"

Foxmarks allows you to quickly and easily synchronize your bookmarks between any computer running Firefox and Foxmarks via their own server; when you install the extension for the first time, you are prompted to set up a Foxmarks account to upload your bookmarks to. If you're an average internet user, chances are this is a good enough setup for you; however, if you're internet-savvy enough and have your own web hosting like I do, there's a way for you to synchronize your bookmarks synchronized from the safety of your own server. Here's how to do it:

Step 1

Close out of the intro screen that pops up after you've installed Foxmarks and restarted Firefox and click on the Foxmarks icon, located in the bottom right:

Step 2

On the first settings page, insert a valid FTP user login for your server:

I prefer to keep my bookmarks updated with minimal effort, so I enable Automatic Synchronization and have Foxmarks synchronize once I've closed Firefox (Sync on Shutdown).

Step 3

On page two, in the box titled, "URL:", place the location on the server where you want your bookmarks stored. You MUST include the name of the XML file at the end of the URL string; the first time I tried to get Foxmarks working, I followed a guide that used an older version of the plugin that didn't require you to include the filename in the url and my bookmarks wouldn't synchronize:

Make sure the directory you're storing the XML file in has the proper permissions set so Foxmarks can write to it.

And that's it! Once you close down Firefox, you should see a notification that Foxmarks is synchronizing your bookmarks. Afterwards, if you look on your server, you'll see an XML file sitting comfortably within the directory you specified. Now, go to any other computer you use that you'd like to synchronize your Firefox bookmarks to and repeat steps 1 through 3. Once that's done, you're finished!

I've been using this setup for a couple weeks and I haven't had a problem yet. If you get conflicting bookmarks, Foxmarks will even ask you which one to keep, as was the case recently with two Digg RSS feeds I had on my list of sites. I tried Google Browser Sync before migrating to Foxmarks, and I have to say that Foxmarks is far superior. When I used  Google Browser Sync, favicons didn't make the transition between computers; I use favicons to easily identify which bookmark I'm clicking on and I was lost without them. Foxmarks hasn't had that problem yet.

And that's that. Good night, folks!