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Bloggiesta Mini Challenge: Backing up Your Blog

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Welcome to the Bloggiesta Back-up Challenge!

This mini challenge is part of the Blogggiesta! – hosted by Maw Books

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Can you imagine losing your blog?

Try to think about how devastated you’d be if you woke up one morning and found that all your posts had disappeared. I can’t imagine starting out again from scratch – it must be heartbreaking, it feels like losing big bets on daisyslots.com with your favorite casino games. How frustrating is that?

The threat of losing your blog is real and could happen to any of us without warning. Viruses, hardware problems and technical issues within your server provider are among the numerous causes of data loss. The good news is that we can all back-up our blogs so that we are able to retrieve everything if disaster strikes.

Backing up can seem like a daunting exercise, but it isn’t that hard – it takes just seconds to save all your precious posts.

Saving your Posts and Comments

All the writing within your posts and the comments can be backed up by creating an .xml file. As well as saving it to your computer it is a good idea to copy it onto a CD, memory stick, or external hard drive that you can then take to another house – you can never be too careful when it comes to the blog you’ve worked so hard on.

a) Blogger Blogs

Click on the Settings tab on your blogger main menu.

Click on Export Blog in the top centre of the screen.

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Click on Download Blog and then save your blog in a safe place on your computer. Your posts can then be reinstated by clicking on Import Blog to the left.

b) WordPress Blogs

Click on the Export tab under the Tools menu of your WordPress Dashboard.

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Click on Download Blog and then save your blog in a safe place on your computer. Your posts can then be reinstated by clicking on Import, also under the Tools Menu.

Saving your Images/Photographs

Unfortunately the .xml file you created above will not save the images or other media files that you have uploaded to your blog. It is a good idea to create an upload folder, containing everything you have uploaded to your blog.  You can then regularly copy this to a safe place too.

Please note: if you’d like to easily reinstall your blog then you need to maintain the file structure that your blog uses to store photos. This commonly means storing all images in folders according to the month they were uploaded. Check your own settings to see how your files are named.

What next?

That’s it! Now you can relax in the knowledge that your blog’s contents is safe for another day!

To see the other Bloggiesta challenges and join in the festivities visit Maw Books.

144 replies on “Bloggiesta Mini Challenge: Backing up Your Blog”

Jackie, this post is hereby “starred” in my Google Reader! One of the million reasons why LiveJournal sucked was that you could only export one month at a time. And by the time I realized I *should* do that, the task was too daunting. Now that I’m on WordPress I resolve to do better at this.

Thanks a million!

Laura, It is good that you are seeing the benefits already. Sorry for ignoring Livejournal users with this post, but I’m afraid it is not something I know anything about.

Done! I was kind of worrying about this lately. I backed it up about six months ago, but I do need to get in the habit of doing it at least once every couple months. Thank you, once again, for helping us!

I never thought about doing that! I just did it. I figured I’d better do it before I started messing with the code for Bloggiesta, and I’ll redo it after I’ve got everything fixed up!

Very good tips! I use a backup plugin for WordPress that emails me the data (including comments) on a weekly basis. Your post reminded me that the backup may not include the pictures. I’m going to make a folder for those and back them up. 🙂

I actually just backed up my blog a couple of weeks ago, at the end of the year, but it can’t hurt so I just did it again. I really should organize my photo folder a bit better too but I think that’s a task for another day. Thanks, Jackie.

I have just backed up my blog –

In two ways:
1 – the blogger method
2 – and since my template is modified and a non blogger url I use a program HTT Track Website Copier. I downloaded it free a few months ago when I added a column onto my blog.

I hope it works if I loose my blog.

Wow this comments sounds really geeky…. I really don’t know what I am doing.

Thanks for the mini challenge!

Shellie, I love geeky comments! Thank you for sharing that – I never know how geeky to get with these posts – don’t want to scare people off, but don’t want them to miss something important either.

Before I do this I have a question: By clicking “export” is it going to take everything off Blogger so I will have to re-load everything?

I am so nervous about doing anything on that page of Blogger, because I don’t want to lose everything…the very thing we’re trying to avoid!

Help!

I always knew that I should do this – but wasn’t really sure where to start. You are right – it was very easy! Thanks for the info – I will need to put reminders in for a while to keep doing it!

Wow, seriously? It’s that simple! I just did it! Don’t worry I’ll put up a Mr. Linky post at the end of the challenge but I am so relieved to know how easy it is! Thank you!

I made the mistake of not doing this once and ever since then, have not forgotten! I just did a new backup and am writing it into my schedule so that I do it regularly.

Thanks for this great mini-challenge… losing data is heart-breaking!

Thanks for the nudge. I backed up everything last night.

I have a self-hosted WordPress blog (moved from Blogger to WP last week, so it’s new to me). I learned that besides backing up your posts, you should also back up your WP database in case your webhost has a server issue. You can do this with a plugin called WP-DB-Backup. You can set a schedule so that it will email you the backup file as often as you like (I chose weekly).

There is also a plugin called WordPress Backup that will back up your themes, settings, and images. You can also set this to email you on a scheduled frequency.

So between your .xml export method and the 2 plugins, I should be good to go. Thanks!

Ann, Fantastic advice! It is important for those who are self hosted to back up their data base. I do it through my service provider, but that will be different for everyone. Using a plugin is a great way to do it automatically – thank you!

Wow! This was surprisingly easy…now if my challenge was just as easy, wouldn’t that be nice? Either way, this is great to have as a back up, just in case and probably a good idea to do it every so often. Thanks!

Thanks for hosting this mini-challenge and giving us all a reminder to back up our words and work! I did this once when migrating from Blogger to WordPress, but hadn’t since. It only takes a second and could potentially save hours worth of headaches. Piece of cake!

Oh Jackie, thank you so much. In the back of my mind I know I should do this but I wasn’t really sure how to do it. I have an external hard drive and back up my computer all the time but not my blog. I feel better now. Thanks again.

I was in an absolute panic about this a few hours ago and here you come to the rescue! This weekend is all about angels! I am on WordPress but had a web person create my site, so I had no idea what to do regarding back up. I pressed the button, just as you directed and there it was. I subscribe to Carbonite, so I know that once I have the information saved on my computer, it is saved on someone else’s computer far away from here. Best investment ever. Thanks again!

I admit I never noticed that export button in Blogger before and had no clue backing up was so amazingly easy. I’m off to do it and then complete this mini challenge. Thanks!!!!!!

I have downloaded my blog and made two copies on two different CSDs. Thanks for this.

BTW: I have a test blog, not open to the public, on which almost every post appears. This is a second place to save my photos and embedded videos. On Blogger, all photos appear in Picasa and are stored there too.

Backing up my blog was the first thing I did on Friday morning, before I started tinkering 🙂

I need to automate it to run on a regular basis, so I’m going to look into the plug-ins that Ann Kingman recommended (above)

Thanks so much for reminding everyone about this crucial bit of blog housekeeping.

I make a habit of backing up my files at least once a week to my computer. It’s a good thing I do because last month I was making some changes to my primary domain with my host server when something went wrong and EVERYTHING went missing. They couldn’t even find my data. Thank goodness I had a backup file on my personal computer to give them so they could update things! Losing one or two posts I can handle, more than that and I’d have a nervous breakdown!! LOL You just never know…

Farrah’s Little Place in the Blogosphere – farrah.tbfreviews.net
The Book Faery Reviews – tbfreviews.net

Just one more thing I had no idea I needed to do. It’s a good thing I didn’t realize the level of my ignorance before I started this Bloggiesta. I might have grabbed the tequila rather than making the effort!

I not participating in Bloggiesta but saw a link to your challenge posted somewhere. So glad I visited. Hadn’t thought much about this until now, to be perfectly honest.

This is one of the first things I did for bloggiesta! I backed up both Savvy and the War challenge blog. I have all the photo files stored in a separate place online as well. I did find this post helpful when looking for the War blog file I needed…so thanks!

Thanks so much for the easy guide! I just exported my blog. I can’t imagine losing two years’ (and 600 posts?!) worth of reviews and other thoughts… I would be devastated!

Thanks for this useful tip. I did not know before that there were actually a change to do it like this. Now I have exported by posts and comments and I feel a lot safer already.

Even though my server backs up my site if I ever need to have them restore it they charge me. This couldn’t have been easier, thanks so much for the tip, I just did it!

I just usually backup my MySQL database, I haven’t ever used the Tools > Export feature on my blog! I have backed up all three of my blogs and it feels good to know that I have it!

I’ve decided to export my blog every month and have made a reminder. I would definitely be seriously upset if I lost the content. :/ Now, I think I will start sorting my images the way you suggest, too. 🙂

Thank you for this Mini-Challenge. I have never backuped my blog so far (yes, I know, that’s scary) but thanks to your blog I finally did it.

I knew of the export button but somehow was a) a little scared to try what happens and b) I thought that this would be to easy to be a real backup.

Also thank you for the hint with the pictures, I will keep it in mind!

“Can you imagine losing your blog?” Yes! This happened to me this October, and I lost everything, I tried to find a few old entries and repost them, and also old comments, but it was a major nightmare. I had no idea there was an export/backup feature in WP, I guess I should have thought about it BEFORE lol but I’m 30 some posts back in, starting fresh I guess wasn’t so bad…BUT I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT, I RECOMMEND VIEWING THIS MINI CHALLENGE INSTEAD LOL! *wanders off to backup files* I will probably become obsessive about this 😉

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