How to add website shortcuts to the Windows Start Menu

Posted on March 1, 2008 at 6:13 am

Looking for a way to add program shortcuts to the Start Menu? Ever thought about adding website (URL) shortcuts to your Start Menu? It’s actually quite useful! I personally use Firefox for my browsing needs, but I still hate having to browse through my ridiculously long list of bookmarks just to open my email (yes I could just type in gmail, but I’m too lazy to type it)!

I’ve previously written about some cool services like Only2Clicks for creating a custom bookmarks for your favorite websites. So basically with only two clicks, hence the name, you can load up any web page! Nifty, but the only problem is that you need to have that start page open whenever you want to open a new website, which basically means more than two clicks again!

If you want to simply be able to open a web site with only two clicks no matter if you have a browser window open or not, then you might try adding URLs to the Start Menu. In this way, you can pin a couple of your favorite sites and have instant access to them!

How to add website links to the Start Menu

First, you need to right-click on the Start button and click on Explore.

This will open Windows Explorer in the Start Menu folder under your user profile. If you want to be able to add the website shortcut to the Start Menu for all users, when you right-click, choose Explore All Users instead of Explore. There should be a folder called Programs also, don’t go into that folder.

Now right-click and choose New and then Shortcut.

In the box “Type the location of the item”, go ahead and type in the URL for the website you want to add. For example, type in http://www.online-tech-tips.com and click Next.

Give your shortcut a name in the “Type a name for this shortcut” box. This will be the title shown in the Start Menu and it can be whatever you like.

Click Finish and you’re done! There is one thing to remember when it comes to adding website shortcuts to the Start Menu and that is which version of the start menu are you using. If you’re using the Classic Start Menu, your link will appear at the top, above the Programs group like shown below:

However, if you’re using the normal Windows Start Menu that comes with Windows XP, by default the link will only appear when you click Start and then click on Programs like shown below.

However, that’s not what we want! We want to be able to click on Start and then simply click on our link, not have to click on Programs first! Luckily it’s very easy to get your link into the main section of the Start Menu and that is by simply opening the programs list and then dragging and dropping the URL to where you want it.

Drag it between any two programs listed and you’ll see that it becomes a dark black line, meaning you can release the mouse button and it will drop it in between the other two shortcuts.

And now that’s it! Hopefully, this was not too complicated of a process! There is no need to edit the registry as some sites suggest, it can all be done via creating a simple shortcut! Enjoy!

[tags]add shortcut to start menu, add website link to start menu, add url to start menu, add shortcuts to start menu, add items to start menu[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

9 Responses to “How to add website shortcuts to the Windows Start Menu”

Mehdi Akram said on : March 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am

That’s Nice

Charles said on : March 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm

I have a question that I am not sure was answered in the above advice. After downloading Adobe CS3, I made Shortcut Icons on my WindowsXP desktop by going into the START menu and then ALL PROGRAMS where I simply clicked and draged the Photoshop CS3 and Illustrator CS3 names to a spot on my desktop. Unfortunately, the names disappreared from the All Programs list. In other words, they moved but did not copy. I can’t seem to figure out how to get the programs relisted under the appropriate Adobe CS3 heading under All Programs. Would you please help me with this issue? Thanks.
–Charles

Charles said on : March 23rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm

Sorry to bother you, but I figured it out a way of doing it, albeit a round-about way.
Thanks.
If you can point me to proper directions I would appreciate it, even though I’m cool for now.
–Charles

Angela said on : April 15th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

How can you force the url to open in a new window. ie not go over the top of another browser page that is already open?

carlos said on : June 1st, 2008 at 3:58 pm

muito boa essa dica, vlw me ajudo muito!!!

Jitendra Gupta said on : August 12th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

Not working in Windows Server 2000

Aruki said on : December 18th, 2008 at 4:29 am

Hey, really nice one! Thanks! =)

information security software said on : January 12th, 2009 at 6:04 am

USB drive blocking software keeps all USB activities performed on client machine and sends relevant information to server administrator.

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[...] How to add website shortcuts to the Windows Start Menu Looking for a way to add program shortcuts to the Start Menu? Ever thought about adding website (URL) shortcuts to your Start Menu? It’s actually quite useful! I personally use Firefox for my browsing needs, but I still hate having to browse through my ridiculously long list of bookmarks just to open my email (yes I could just type in gmail, but I’m too lazy to type it)! [...]
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:24 am