Back it up, blogger

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!