Betula is a single-user self-hosted bookmarking tool for the independent web. It is simple to run and use. I started making it at the end of 2022. It is my main project currently. When I program, I usually program Betula.

• Website
• Fediverse @betula@fosstodon.org
• Matrix space
• Mailing list about development (text only)
• I post screenshots of development on my Boosty rarely

Some Betulæ I know of

The first one is mine! As you can see, the pattern of using links or betula as the subdomain has emerged.

• https://links.bouncepaw.com
• https://links.flancia.org
• https://links.danilax86.space
• https://links.riskiwah.xyz
• https://links.hd-dn.com
• https://links.ihatereality.space/
• https://links.goldstein.rs
• https://betula.trickyfoxy.ru
• https://links.ndpi.io
• https://betula.klava.wiki
• https://links.khinah.xyz
• https://links.johv.dk
• https://links.compost.party

Note that every instance is one-person only! Want to have your own Betula? Set up your instance. Having problems? Contact me.

Relation to Mycorrhiza

Both projects are part of the Mycoverse. What does it mean now? Not much, except it means that both projects are heavily connected ideologically and will be connected technically in the future.

Both projects use Mycomarkup as the only markup language.

How to reset password?

1. Open your Betula file with sqlite3.

2. Run delete from BetulaMeta where Key like 'Admin%';

3. Restart Betula.

4. Betula will prompt you for a new username and password when you open it.

Simplest bookmarklet

This one is obsolete. An advanced bookmarklet is built in Betula itself (visit the Bookmarklet page). But if you want it, here it is.

javascript:window.open(%22https://links.bouncepaw.com/save-link?url=%22+window.location.href+%22&title=%22+document.title,'_blank')

Change the URL with your own.

Read more about the bookmarklet:

• Betula bookmarklet

After releasing v1.3

• Mastodon thread

1/4 Thoughts after the recent Betula release

I think I should get a separate domain for Betula at some point. Domains like betula.* are all taken, which makes no surprise to me, because this is a cool short word. Something like joinbetula.* (akin to the Fediverse tradition) or betulanet.* is manageable. Maybe the-betula.*?

2/4 Also, somebody posted Betula on HackerNews, and it remained on the front page for the whole day. It doubled the number of stars on GitHub, which is fun, because it's just a mirror; the number is still two-digit, but it's big enough to impress, because most repos barely get more than 10. It also brought two subscribers to my Betula! It's not much, but I believe in slow growth.

3/4 The discussions on HackerNews are not that interesting. Most of commenters compared Betula to other bookmarking solutions and approaches; this is valid, but boring. Also, people wondered what the word Betula means and whether it comes from Hebrew. No, it does not, it means Birch in Latin, my favorite tree.

I thank people who answered the questions for me. I don't have an account there.

Nevertheless, I had fun reading them and being on the front page.

4/4 Also, the Betula Nix package maintainer reported an embarrassing bug which I had to fix quickly and release a hotfix. There's never enough testing! No unit tests would've caught that…