Jan 14

How to make a quickstart folder for your projects

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12:15pm on Thursday 14th January, 2010

Here’s a simple little tip to save a few precious seconds each time you sit down to start work on a website project.

Bookmark This

This is certainly true for me, and probably true for all web developers—when you are working on a project, there is a set of sites and URLs that you need to have open. For me this usually means:

  • The project to-do list in Basecamp
  • The site on my localhost
  • The site’s control panel
  • phpMyAdmin
  • The ExpressionEngine documentation
  • php.net (for looking up the occasional function or when I can’t remember those damn date formatting letters)

An open bookmarks folder on Firefox's toolbar

Now you could just open up each site as-and-when you need it, but one trick that I’ve discovered is to place all of those links into a folder on your browser’s Bookmarks Toolbar (I keep mine under a master folder named “Clients”). Now when you sit down to work on something, go to that folder and Ctrl-click on it (Cmd-click on Mac) or select the “Open All in Tabs” option. This shortcut will open up every link in the folder as a new tab; with just one click, your browser is now set up with everything you need to get started on that project.

Development vs. Live

This technique can be extended to cover Development vs. Live environments too. Perhaps when working with the live site you need to add your Plesk control panel or links to other third-party services that you are using—just include any frequently accessed sites in the relevant folder, and you’re one click away from being ready to work.

So there you have it

A simple way to save yourself a little wasted time while you work on the Next Big Thing™.

I'd love to hear what you think - please use the form below to leave your comments. Some HTML is permitted: b, i, em, del, ins, strong, pre, code, blockquote, abbr. URLs or email addresses will be automatically converted into links.

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  1. Richard's Gravatar

    Richard at 1:51pm on 14th January, 2010 #

    Great idea Matthew. Certainly a lot more reliable than using browser history to remember all the URLs and then deleting them all every time you clear your private data :)

  2. Tim Print's Gravatar

    Tim Print at 9:22pm on 15th January, 2010 #

    I use this to open my daily morning round up. A few Cycling, Motocross and music sites to start the day off while I have my breakfast. Never thought of using it for something useful…

  3. Emily H's Gravatar

    Emily H at 10:36am on 18th January, 2010 #

    Ah ha. Great solution! Thanks.

    When in the middle of a project I would sometimes save all the open tabs to open on launch in the preferences, but found this didn’t really work. With all the best intentions, the morning of the next day I will end up looking at Twitter, some blogs, FreeAgent and a couple other clients sites when responding to emails, all BEFORE I get back to the project. At which point I’ll have a kabillion tabs open!