A start page you do not have to remember to visit

The visit problem

Every start page fails the same way. Someone builds a good one, shares the URL, and three weeks later the team is back to typing the first four letters of a domain and hitting enter. Nobody went back — not because the page was bad, but because visiting it was an extra step and the browser's own new tab was already there.

A start page is only a start page if it is what opens when you open a tab. Otherwise it is a website about your links, and the address bar beats it every time.

That is the first thing Linksley changes. The extension replaces the new tab with your boards. It renders from a local cache, so there is no spinner between Ctrl-T and your links, and it is searchable. Extensions cover Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Opera; there is no Safari extension, and no mobile app.

Fewer widgets, on purpose

Here is the trade, stated plainly. Widget-rich start pages put news feeds, RSS blocks, weather, notes and clocks on the same canvas. Linksley has none of those and is not trying to. If your start page is a personal dashboard and the feeds are the point, keep a widget-based one — Linksley will feel bare.

Linksley optimizes for the reason you opened the page: find a link and leave.

Boards do hold more than links, though: text blocks for context, checklists with a recurring cadence, and read-only team calendars pulled from ICS feeds. What they do not hold is a feed to get lost in.

The governance a shared start page usually lacks

The second thing that kills a team start page is ownership. It is either one page everybody can edit, or one page nobody can edit. Neither survives contact with fifteen people.

Boards split the difference, and the links a company depends on stop being a page one person maintains as a favor.

• Share a board with a person or a group, and cap individuals at view-only — enforced in the app and in the extension, not just in the interface.
• Delegate Can share to a lead so you are not the bottleneck for access requests.
• Push required boards members cannot remove, so the security policy and the expense portal sit on everyone's new tab.
• Offboard in one action: revoke access, and every link stays with the workspace.

When the page needs to face outward

Some start pages are for other people: a resource page for clients, a link hub for a course, a directory for an event.

On a Business plan you can publish a board as a public page at a pretty URL, with a header image and tagline, per-link descriptions and images, and one of five themes — Classic, Gallery, Launcher, Showcase, and Card Grid. Protect a share link with a password, or require an account to view it. White-label puts your logo on the app, the extension, the new tab, and the published pages, so the page reads as yours rather than as a tool's.

Publishing public boards is the Business-plan part; internal boards and the new tab work on the free and individual plans.