July 27, 2013

How to Back Up Your Blog


I got some blogging tips for you today! Do you back up your blog? If so, good for you! If not, would you like to learn?

With my extensive photo inventory, I am rather zealous about backing up files. The Time Machine program is set up on my trusty Mac computer, and I utilize multiple external hard drives. But there are some backup tasks that have to done manually. So I set up reminders on my computer’s calendar to make sure that I get them done. One of those manual tasks is saving a backup of my blogs on a monthly basis.

In the world of cyberspace, bad things can happen. Blogs can be hacked. Templates can get messed up. So it’s best to save all of the hard work that has gone into your blog in case disaster ever strikes. And, Blogger really makes it easy to save your blog files.

To save a copy of your template, go to your blog’s Dashboard and click on Templates along the left-hand column. Then click on the Backup/Restore button in the upper right-hand corner.


A window pop-up will appear. Click on the Download Full Template button. A file will then download to your computer.



To save a copy of your blog contents, go to your blog’s Dashboard and click on Settings/Other along the left-hand column. Then click on Export Blog under Blog Tools.



A window pop-up will appear. Click on the Download Blog button. A file will then download to your computer.



I keep these backup files on my computer and one of my external hard drives. Another option is to save them on your favorite cloud storage, such as Google Drive or Amazon Cloud Drive. With a Google account, you automatically have 5 GB of free storage available on Google Drive. You can also sign up for 5 GB of free offsite storage with Amazon.

I hope this information is helpful to you. Now back up those beautiful blogs!

P.S Be sure to read the first two comments below. Blog backups only include the links to your posted photos, not the actual photo files.

11 comments:

  1. be aware that the photos you've uploaded to your blogspot blog are not saved with your back-up file. just the links to them are. the photos you upload to your blog posts are saved separately into picasa web albums (automatically by blogger when you do a post). you can delete those photos by deleting those picasa web albums, even if you've got a back-up of your blog in place. i learned the hard way...

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    1. I'm sorry that you learned some hard lessons! Yes, I realize that photos stored on Picasa are not included with the blog backup file. But thanks for mentioning that fact for other readers of this post. I keep all of my blog photos on my Mac's hard drive in a designed folder and also backed up on one of the my external drives. Some of those photos are on Picasa and some are on Flickr. I also compose my posts in Word files and insert the corresponding photos or photo web links for each post. The Word files are stored on my hard drive and also backed up on an external hard drive.

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  2. Thanks, Donna.... Both George and I did it... Too bad you can't set it up to do automatically every month or so.... I backed up both of my blogs. My big one was 110.3 MB's..... The other one is small...

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  3. very good information. I'm pinning this

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  4. Thanks for the heads up on backup Donna - I've just done it. Now, I should repeat this monthly right?

    I copy all my photos to portable hard drives to have another safe option, and to get them off the MacBook Air I use mostly, but which of course doesn't have a huge storage capacity. It's my travel baby and I love it compared to my weighty MacBook and old Dell PC. Yes, I've too many computers and won't even go on about the desktops hanging about this overstuffed cottage (blame Bob for those!). I don't know how to use Time Machine - I need to take a lesson or two at the Apple Store but I dislike our local one at the mall, always so crowded and the 'school section' is in the middle of the store and I can't hear anything the teachers say with the shoppers/browsers all chatting away at the top of their lungs!

    I've just purchased the portable CD/DVD player for the Air because it doesn't have a slot. Now I'm thinking perhaps I should also burn my photos onto discs as another way to save them in case the portable hard drives blow up! What say you? All this tech stuff takes so long and I get very nervous about it worrying I'll end up losing things or messing up!

    More exciting and peaceful, I've been working on the next challenge subject - a lovely one - but I have far too many water images and, as always, choosing is going to be a job! Lots of fun though.

    Hope you and your dearest are enjoying the weekend and all is going OK for the two of you. Thinking of you and wishing you well.
    Hugs - Mary

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  5. Great tutorial, Donna. When this computer stops acting up, I'll come back here!

    xoxo

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  6. Hi Donna, thanks for the great tips. I do a backup of my blog because of course I too learned the hard way! *sigh* However, I was not aware that the pictures were not saved in that backup. I like your idea of composing your posts in Word first! I will have to implement that into my routine for future reference! :D
    Hugs,
    Beth P

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  7. Always better safe than sorry! Thanks for posting this Donna...Hope you and Jim are doing better today...?!!!
    hughugs

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  8. Done! Thanks for the tutorial. When I thought I had lost my blog last year I was pretty upset. Fortunately it wasn't lost! I get an email of every blog post, including photos, and I save them to my hard drive. I've done that since the beginning.
    ~Adrienne~

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  9. Great tip Donna- thanks for sharing.

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Marty, here! Donna loves comments, and I faithfully pass them on to her. Thank you so much for visiting!