Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Back Up Your Blog!

Jackie at Farm Lane Books Blog did a Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge on this very topic a couple years ago. It’s a great and informative post that explains how to export your blog (whether you’re on Blogger or WordPress) and save it on your hard drive. I’m going to elaborate on it a bit and update it since Blogger has a new interface.

I’m also going to take you one step further. Actually, two steps further.

Imagine waking up and finding out that your Blogger blog has been suspended. *gasp* After you recover (somewhat) from the tragedy, you jump through hoops, offer up your first-born, and beg and plead to the powers at be (aka G**gle – hey, I don’t want them to pay any attention to me) to let you have your blog back. Sure, you’ll most likely be able to get it back but when or at what cost? (When I say ‘at what cost’, I mean at what length will you have to go to get your blog back? How much time will you have to waste on getting it back? Time is money people. Your time is your most valuable asset, is it not?)

That example may seem a bit extreme but it’s not. It’s reality, my friends. And it has happened to several bloggers just recently. Why? you ask – according to the bloggers I spoke with, they weren’t given a clear cut reason. Just that their blog, in some way or fashion, violated G**gle’s ToS (Terms of Service). Yes, G**gle can shut you down without notice.

I ain’t going to lie. I freaked out when I heard about this happening. That’s when I decided to be proactive instead of reactive. You with me?

 

Back Up Your Blog

First, we’re going to back up your blog content (your posts and comments).

Side note: I’m going to use images from Blogger’s New Interface for this tutorial. We should all be using the new interface by now. Myself included. *grumbles*

From your Blogger Dashboard, click on SETTINGS located on the left side. Then click on OTHER.

         

 

Under the Blog Tools section, click on EXPORT BLOG.

 

Click DOWNLOAD BLOG.

Once it’s downloaded, you’ll find the file on your hard drive. If you’re like me, you have a special place on your hard drive for your bloggy things so that everything is all in one place and easy to find. I move this file there.

 

 

Back Up Your Template

Now let’s back up that pretty little template of yours.

From your Blogger Dashboard, click on TEMPLATE located on the left side.

Near the upper right corner, click on BACKUP / RESTORE.

Click on DOWNLOAD FULL TEMPLATE.

Again, once it’s downloaded, you’ll find the file on your hard drive. Move it to your special blog folder.

 

Make a Back Up Blog

Remember how G**gle can decide on a whim to shut you down? (I should mention that this can happen to Wordpress blogs too.) Well, down time is not good in this case so we need reinforcements. This is what I do every Friday. (If you follow me on Twitter, then you’ve seen my #BackUpFriday tweets.)

Create a WordPress account. It’s easy and it’s free. I recommend trying to keep the same name. Mine’s at thebookvixen.wordpress.com. Be sure to create the free blog.

Since this back up blog is not my main blog and I don’t want people following it, I make it private. To do this, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Privacy.

In the Privacy Settings, click the bubble next to “I would like my site to be private…” and click Save Changes.

Now we’re going to import your posts and comments from Blogger to WordPress. Go to your WordPress Dashboard.

Click on Tools > Import.

 

If you’re on Blogger, click Blogger.

It’s going to then ask you to authorize WordPress to access your Blogger blogs. Click Yes. WordPress will grab all of the blogs you have on Blogger. For instance, I have 3 blogs. It grabbed all 3. But it’s up to you to import the ones you want. For this example, I will import TBV Test Blog.

Now it’s going to import all of your posts and comments. If you use a third party comment system, I do not believe it will import those. (Please correct me if I’m wrong on this.) The only thing I don’t like about the importing process is that I never get a ‘You’re all done’ notice. It just keeps saying that it’s importing. So I watch the number of posts and comments and when I see they are the same, I refresh the page.

Your blog is now on WordPress and ready to go at any time, should G**gle decide to shut you down. The only thing you need to remember is to import on a regular basis. Here’s how to do that:

From your WordPress Dashboard > Tools > Import > Reset importer.

What that does is allow you to click on the Import button next to the blog you want to import to. Just click Import and have some coffee.

How often you import is up to you. If you have posts going up every day, several times throughout the day, then you’ll want to import more often. For me, once a week is good enough. I have a reminder set up in my calendar and when it goes off every Friday, I back up my blogs both ways (on my hard drive and to WordPress). I also do a #BackUpFriday tweet to remind others as well.

In the event that your Blogger blog does get shut down (or you just want to switch over to WordPress), you’ll be ready to go. If you’re like me and you already have a custom domain name (i.e. thebookvixen.com instead of thebookvixen.blogspot.com) all that’s left to do is switch your domain name over from Blogger to WordPress. Then be sure to go to your Privacy Settings and change your WordPress blog from private to public.

 

Got any questions or tips for backing up your blog? Did I leave out anything? Let me know in the comments :)

And if you back up your blog and/or create a back up blog on WordPress for this Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge, let me know so I can give you a virtual high five!