Simple Bookmark

A linkding inspired, self-hosted, bookmark manager built with my Essentials framework that only requires .NET 8.0, an SQL database, and a C compiler.

Downloads | My Software | Documentation

Intro

Simple Bookmark (name pending) is a fast, portable, and secure, self-hosted bookmark manager that was inspired by the Linkding project.

I built Simple-Bookmark mostly because I didn't want the container lock-in. I also wanted more extensibility for caching, databases, authentication methods, modern security defaults, 2FA, and a performance oriented server framework. Finally, while I enjoy linkding's UI, I felt like it could use some modernization and a little more reactivity.

Features

Light/Dark theme
2FA and public-key JWT authentication
HTML bookmark file import from Linkding and others
HTML, JSON, and CSV bookmark export
Bookmark quick-add for web browsers
Invite users with share links
Supports (and tested) SQLite, SQLServer, MySQL/MariaDB databases
It's quick <300ms load time & under 150kB with compression
It's small, 142mb Docker image
Argon2Id password hashing with secure defaults
Supports enterprise services: HashiCorp Vault, SQLServer, Auth0, and Redis
Built-in TLS (TLS is required)

Deployment overview

You need to read the quick-start guide to fully configure Simple-Bookmark but here are the basic steps.

[!NOTE] Simple-bookmark was built bare-metal as the primary target, this is because I believe users should have the support to deploy open source apps easily outside of a container. So while a container deployment is an option, the container is actually built from the Linux-x64 package during CI build time.

Container install

Download the latest alpine build package: sb-alpine3.19-oci.tgz

This archive contains all the software needed to build the image locally. It also comes with a docker-compose.yaml file for easy setup and deployment. Here is the gist:

tar -xzf sb-alpine3.19-oci.tgz
docker build . -t vnuge/simple-bookmark
docker-compose up -d

Of course there is more setup involved, so take a look at the docs for more info

The image should be about 139mb when built! I'm also hoping to get it down even smaller in the future. You may also use Podman in the same format, simply substitute the word docker with podman in the previous commands.

Bare-metal install

[!NOTE] Bare metal installs will always have support, but it is far more difficult to account for all operating systems and users competencies for installers, compilers, operating systems and so on

Please make sure yo read the quick-start guide for full installs. The following is a basic overview of how to install, build, and run the release server application on your machine. Each archive includes a Tasfile.yaml file that is used to build and run your application with just a few commands.

Prerequisites

Download the package archive for your OS from my builds page
Install go-task globally on your system
Unzip the archive. Example: tar xzf linux-x86_64-release.tgz

Non Windows only

sudo task setup-<apt | apk | dnf> #installs required tools and compiles libraries

Optionally create a self-signed TLS certificate using openssl and exports it to the proper location

sudo task create-cert #runs an openssl command

Optionally set file permissions

chmod -R 0750 . && chmod -R 0770 data/ #only data dir needs write permissions

Windows only

task setup #runs all setup rules

[!IMPORTANT]
This command attempts to move or compile native libraries on your system. Windows users will have to manually adjust their config file, or install VisualStudio build tools, otherwise you'll see a bunch of errors.

First start

Starting the server for the first time you'll want to enable setup mode to allow admin registration for the first time. This is operation insecure, please read the quick-start guide.

task -- --setup #default task runs the server

Normal operation

task

Links & Support

Package downloads - Archives, checksums, signatures, and module source code
Documentation - quick-start guides, user guides and more (work in progress)

Compatibility Notes

Simple-Bookmark uses far more aggressive input sensitization than Linkding and others. I am still working out a happy medium on aggressive safety and usability. When importing bookmarks, you may consider selecting the fix errors checkbox that will attempt to correct your HTML file import by replacing illegal characters with white-space.

License

The software in this repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (or any later version). See the LICENSE files for more information.

Contact

Head over to my website for my contact info/community.

Other open source notices

This project was initially built in about a week using Flowbite. I really tried to push myself with a new front-end application from scratch using a new component library. I will slowly clean up the repeated tailwindcss utilities to make classes more unified throughout the app, but it's low priority. So big shout out to the Flowbite project and their free components and svg icons.

This project was also heavily inspired by the Linkding project which I used for years until I wanted to escape the Docker container and add some new features and speed it up! Thanks for the awesome inspiration!

Finally of course VueJS, Vite, Tailwindcss, Postcss, VueUse, HeadlessUI, and many other FOSS projects made this possible!