IT for donuts: how to organise websites you want to check regularly

December 20, 2013 by John McGarvey

Bookmarks in a book

IT for donuts is our regular Friday feature where we explain a tech term or answer a common question about business IT. This week: how to keep an eye on websites you want to check regularly.

When you're running a business, there are lots of websites to which you'll regularly turn for information, inspiration, news and updates. We explain how to organise them logically.

We've assumed you use Google Chrome, but have linked to instructions for other web browsers too.

Prioritise your regular websites

The first thing to do is to work out how often you want to check each website.

For the sake of this example, let's say there are three sites you use every day, six you visit once a fortnight, and 20 others that you know you'll want to revisit but are unsure how often.

Websites to check daily

To give you easy access to the three most-important websites, set up your web browser so it shows them when you open it.

To do this in Google Chrome, choose the menu button, then Settings. Find the On startup heading and then choose Select pages to set which pages should open when you start up Chrome.

(See full instructions for Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.)

Drag websites to your toolbar

You can drag your six websites to check fornightly to your web browser's bookmarks bar. This is a row of links at the top of the window, like this:

Browser bookmarks bar

To save a website here in Chrome, visit the site and then select the star button to the right of the website's address. Choose Bookmarks bar in the box that appears, then select Done.

You'll see the websites appear in the bookmarks bar, where you can view them in one click.

(See full instructions for Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.)

File other sites in your bookmarks

The other 20 sites that you check now and again belong in your main bookmarks list. To add each, just visit the site and select the star button again. This time, choose Other bookmarks instead of the bookmarks bar.

You can also file these sites into folders within your bookmarks, to make it easier to keep track of them.

(Learn more about bookmarks in Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.)

How do you keep track of your most important websites? Leave a comment and let us know.

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IT for donuts: how to organise websites you want to check regularly