Backing up data ain't nearly as exciting as, say, vegan vanilla slice or Plush Pizza, but we think it's worth a mention for those of y'all who also blog. Just as you should back up any important documents on your personal computer in case of a meltdown, you can also back up your blog. As several unlucky Melbourne food bloggers can attest, accidents and malicious attacks do happen! Maintaining a blog takes a lotta love and hard work and it'd be pretty devastating if all those posts you've written just vanished overnight.
Thankfully for us folks who possess only basic technical skills and use Blogger, saving a blog back-up to a hard disc is quick and easy. Here's what you do...
To back up all of your posts:
- Sign in to Blogger to access your dashboard.
- Choose Settings.
- You should be in the Basic tab. Here the first subheading is Blog Tools.
- From Blog Tools, choose Export Blog and confirm that you wish to Download Blog.
- A dialogue box will pop up; choose to Save File.
- I found that my computer automatically saved the .xml file to My Documents/Downloads, so I shifted it to my preferred folder after download.
This approach will not save your pictures; the .xml file just records the URL of where each picture is hosted. But, amazingly enough, it does save all the comments on your posts!
To back up your blog design (header, fonts, side bar content, etc):
- Sign in to Blogger to access your dashboard.
- Choose Design.
- Select the Edit HTML tab, where the first subheading is Backup/Restore Template.
- From Backup/Restore Template, click on Download Full Template.
- A dialogue box will pop up; choose to Save File.
- I found that my computer automatically saved the .xml file to My Documents/Downloads, so I shifted it to my preferred folder after download.
Again, any pictures that form part of your design will not be saved; just the URL of where each picture is hosted.
In the event that you do need to restore your blog or its layout from a backup, you should be able to work it out by adapting the instructions above (e.g. choose Import instead of Export blog and proceed; choose Upload template instead of Download). You might even consider setting up a dummy blog and testing the uploads there right now. (We did this when we wanted to test out our pretty new 1000th post style.)
I know nothing of how to back up blogs in other platforms like Wordpress. If you do, give us the low-down in a comment below or better yet, write your own blog post about it and send us a link!
sounds like a wise thing to do - I backed up my blog probably well over a year ago and keep meaning to find the link again that gave me the advice - will let you know if I find it as I think it backed up the photos too - but this is very useful to know.
ReplyDeletedone, thanks!
ReplyDeleteoooh I must do this asap! Thanks for the reminder!
ReplyDeleteHey, good idea. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteNow we've just all got to remember to keep doing it with some regularity. :-D
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Cindy. I must explore all the blogger options more. I can't believe I never saw this. I was diligently saving my pages each month but had been slack lately and was thinking I needed to spend 2 hours saving it all. You have saved me 2 hours, I owe you one. :-)
ReplyDeleteThank-you for the timely reminder! I backed up my blog once ages ago. Just backed it up again. :)
ReplyDeletexox Sarah
You're welcome, Thanh and Sarah. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure when these features were introduced but it definitely was not this easy in the past. (We first looked into back-ups when Thanh's blog disappeared and found it to be a real pain.) Now we have no excuse not to do it!
I've never even considered backing up my blog! Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteHi cindy thanks for recommending this - I actually do this because I read this post years ago - so thanks for alerting me. I had some problems recently with opening the file in MS Word but once I searched I found it was a common problem with later versions of Word and easily fixed. It is a great reassurance when I have just backed up using this system
ReplyDelete