I'm happy to announce that everything has gone smooth and we're ready to make this permanent!
The new start page portal is supplied by the people at start.me, and offers great flexibility and customization of your home page (and new tab page, if you wish).
Since there may be some questions about different modes of operation of the start portal, a bit more information for you:
Using the new, static, start page
You can simply use the new start page as-is, and have everything you had before in the start page (with the exception of 2 very low-traffic links I removed) and a few additional options for sites to directly jump to. You still have the option of using either Google or DDG as a search engine, and it will remember your choice like before -- although DDG users will likely have to switch it again this one time with first use.
Using the portal anonymously
I'm happy to say that the people at start.me have worked hard to make this happen at the time of this transition! Kudos!
Using the portal anonymously, you can customize the start page which will be bound to your specific browser instance (by way of a cookie).
You can start customizing immediately by clicking the [Customize] button on the start page. This will make a unique copy of the page for you to customize.
The first time you create a custom page, you will be given a quick tour of the features and customizations.
Important notes:
- Because this custom page is bound to your browser by way of a cookie, you should never clear your cookies for palemoon.start.me or you will immediately lose access to your customizations. Once lost, they cannot be recovered.*
- The customizations and personal bookmarks added to it are still stored in the cloud anonymously and securely, and your cookie will not contain the customization information. The cookie just authenticates you with the portal anonymously to know which page to retrieve.
- If you do not visit your custom start page for 2 months, it will expire and your customizations will be lost. If you visit the page again, your time-out will be refreshed and another 2 month grace period from your last visit will start.
- To make your customizations permanent, you can click the [Sign Up] button in the top bar, which will allow you to create an account on-the-fly and store your customizations in a permanent account that you can log in to.
- Offering a unique URL that can be used to access the anonymous account from other devices.
- Linking an anonymous account with Google or Facebook accounts
To take full advantage of the portal and being able to access your custom start page from any device and quickly add bookmarks to it, you can create an account with start.me using offered login providers or by creating an account bound to your chosen e-mail address directly.
To immediately create an account, click Sign In from the start page, then click "No account yet? Create a free account." at the bottom.
Alternatively, you can customize anonymously first (see above) and then click the Sign Up button.
Using an account, you can access your personal start page (or pages!) from anywhere by logging in to your account from the start page or start.me home page.
Of course, having an account means you don't have to worry about losing your customizations if your cookie gets deleted or otherwise becomes unusable.
* The people at start.me did indicate the following about lost anonymous accounts, in case of emergencies:
This will likely be a manual process, and will require some solid evidence that the page does, indeed, belong to you.We are able to recover anonymous accounts that were lost, but it is quite hard to identify which anonymous account belongs to whom.