If you follow me regularly you’ll know that …
I Love The Flock Browser !
I’ve been using Flock for 3 years and just love the social media features it incorporates but I do install a lot of Firefox Plugins.
Testing and experimenting is an integral part of my job and I can’t resist trying new functionalities and finding applications for my Clients.
My browser is constantly under stress and takes quite a beating – I have a lot of firefox add-ons I regularly use, but not always want to share with an audience or a client so a while back I found out how to manage user profiles on Flock (or Firefox).
By maintaining 2 (or more) profiles you can have a “public” one with no add-ons or bookmarks, and a full profile where your “goodies” are hidden away.
After a full year of installing and removing add-ons my Flock slowed down and during a recent event in Tuscany my Vodafone connection and Mac had a “big fight” and I suffered a kernel panic – Flock was seriously damaged and just wasn’t working.
There were also a few other minor things that had happened to my Flock along the way – my personal ask.com page
wasn’t working – I was getting a blank (white) page.
The kernel panic was the last straw – many pages with javascript just weren’t opening properly … it looked like the end of the road for my Flock.
The I had an Idea: what if I start fresh with a new profile ?
I restarted my flock …
and created a new profile and everything was working once again !
Not only was everything working but my Flock was also faster: all that installing and removing add-ons deteriorated my Flock performance – here’s how to keep your Flock in tip top shape:
If your Flock is working properly create a new profile
On a Mac you’ll find your profiles here:
When creating your new Flock profile call it Backup_date – this way you’ll be able to recognize it easily – profile names are a sequence of letters and numbers (alpanumeric) – by adding a name or even better a date you’ll easily recognize it.
Open your existing (and functioning profile)
copy all files and paste them into your newly created backup profile – you’ll be prompted to replace existing files – go for it. Now you have a complete backup of your existing Flock profile.
In case anything goes wrong with a Firefox add-on and suddenly something you need disappears or even wore Flock doesn’t load pages, go to your backup folder and proceed with the inverse operation – copy and paste all files from your backup folder into your default folder (I called mine Sante’s Profile).
That’s all there is to it.
So in a nutshell:
- Setup profile management on Flock by following these instructions (information on profiles and how to use them can be found here)
- Create a new profile – call it backup_date – this way you’ll always know when was the last time you created a backup profile)
- Go to your profiles folder and copy all the content of your default profile
- Paste it into your backup_date folder, over-write all files
- Create backup profiles regularly, depending on how often you change your Flock configuration. I do this at least once a month now
- Delete older profiles but keep at least a few backups
Enjoy Flock !
PS – you might not be a flock user, consider joining us Flocksters ! If you don’t you’ll be pleased to know this procedure will also work on Firefox 
Technorati Tags:
flock, flock browser, Firefox ADD ONs, firefox, backup firefox, firefox profiles
{ 1 comment }
while your _computer_ “might be under stress and taking a constant beating”, your _browser_ is just software and therefor its just as good after 5000 uses as it was when you first downloaded…you can bog down the browser by installing too many add-ons but that’s about it – no damage done….
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