Sunday 29 January 2012

The Book of the Blog!

You read the blog, Now get the book!

Oh yes. I is an author.
Or maybe not.

The purpose of this post is not to sell the non-existent book of the blog, but to talk about the danger of losing your blog, terrifying thought. A|person very close to me has, in the past, deleted blogs and later regretted losing their content. That need not happen. There are ways to save a blog in its entirety, and a while ago, I was thinking about the 'what ifs'. What would happen if blogger deleted my blog?
Can't happen? You really think so?
It does happen, not just on blogger, for all sorts of reasons. If you google things like "blog deleted" or "can't access my blog", you'll see some scary stories.
What to do?

(Disclaimer. I'm not involved in any way with the sites mentioned, I'm just sharing what seems to me to be a useful resource. i.e., I'm not being a shill for them).
I found a handy site called Blogbooker. Works with Livejournal, Wordpress, Blogger...
It turns your blog into a pdf book, complete with pictures and comments. Okay, it doesn't include video or music, but the pdf is handy, can be read offline, or sent to a printer.


Blogbooker does the pdf conversion of your blog for free.
I won't be printing mine out, because it says there are more than sixteen hundred pages. (There are links on the site to various online printeries.)

Sixteen Hundred!! What?!

 What I recommend is that you do it to your blog(s) right now, and store the files in a couple of places. Offer to store a friend's blog, perhaps,  so it's disaster-resistant even if their house burns down or is hit by an asteroid.
Grit in the Gears blog-book pdf., from december 2006 is a 50.4 MB file.

 All the instructions, which make the process easy, are on the website.
http://blogbooker.com/

Another backup?
http://blogbackupr.com/
I can't speak for this one, I have not tried it  yet.

That's it. Ask yourself, "Would I be upset if my blog and all I uploaded to it was lost forever?",
If the answer is yes, then save it, back it up to your own hard drive and/or a friends.
Good Luck, Bloggers.



11 comments:

  1. You're right.
    You were right when you gave me the link to download it before....
    Either the Carpenter or the Geek WILL help me do this!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It doesn't bear thinking about - our blogs lost forever!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa!

    Have I set off a wave of panic? Will there be a run on the banks? terrified people beating on the doors of the internet's blog-servers "Gimme my blog!" "I don't trust you, is it backed by gold bullion?"....

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you go to Settings/Other in your blog account, you will find a way to export your posts and comments in a format that allows you to import it again. The Export option is dangerously close to the Delete option.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True indeed, it exports as an xml file...
      I used blogger backup before, but when it came to the crunch... it failed. And it's not been updated since 2008.
      The pdf also uses that xml file, so part of the process involves exporting the blog, but it then takes that xml file and turns it into something you can read.
      So you could keep a copy of your blog on your kindle....

      Delete
  5. I actually did this, actually, when I blogged for today.com and I left after they locked me out for sneering at their idiocy.

    But I saved all my posts, so there. What I'm going to do with all that nonsense, I don't know, though, admittedly, I recycled some of it.

    You're right, though. Wouldn't hurt to back it all up again.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Souby! I wonder sometimes what the best way to back up my blog would be. my pal Kissyface had a scare last year wen her blog got deleted. It took a few days and some intense correspondence with blogger, but she got it back. In the meantime she was pretty upset that 5 years of journaling just disappeared like wood to smoke to air.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I can't get mine to work. It says "Site not found, try agian later".

    ReplyDelete


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