Legal Research

Blogger Monday: When should you back up your blog content?

By Info Diva

The next day I went about my day, and it wasn't until late morning that I thought to check in to the blog. Much to my surprise, the new blog post was not there! I went into the dashboard on the back end. Perhaps I had done something wrong? With the WordPress blogging platform, for example, if you leave the category "uncategorized" checked off, the post does not appear publicly.  No, nothing there. I checked draft posts, I checked scheduled posts, and I checked all posts. Nothing. I tried searching the posts from the back end, again nothing. I spent a couple of stressed hours. I remembered largely what I had written, but who wants to spend another hour rewriting a blog post?

I checked Google's help forum and discovered a few others had experienced the same problem recently, but no one was offering answers as to why and how to recover. I vented a bit on Twitter, and got a bit of sympathy but again no real answers.

And then I got a message from educator extraordinaire, Diane Bédard:

Backup? Ummm...hrm. I had never thought to back up an individual blog post. I always thought once it was accepted as post I would be safe. Apparently not!  My first reaction was to say "I could never write off-line and then post to a blog! Blogging directly into the blog platform is part of my creative process!". I have to admit to being a bit huffy about it. And then I realized that (as is always the case) Di was right.

Backing up individual blog posts

So, my compromise is to write directly in the blog platform, but then to copy down the content at least until the post goes up publicly. That way I always have my last post at least in draft "just in case."  I am getting used to this new addition to the workflow, but here is what I do:

• Go to the HTML editor for the blog post and copy all content (using "select all" in the browser).  This way I capture all the HTML coding. 
• I then copy it into a text editor rather than Word so that extra Word code is not added to the document. And...save.  
• If I need to reinstate the blog post later, I would copy from the text editor document, and paste into the HTML editor screen.

So how did I get the post back last Monday? After putting it aside for a couple of hours, I came up with an idea: what about my browser history, was there a link there? I went in, and was very fortunate to somehow (mysteriously) be able to pull open the blog post. It appeared to somehow still be in Blogger, albeit lost. I copied from the HTML editor and then went to the blog in a fresh screen, started a new blog post, and pasted the copied text back into the HTML editor.  I was extremely lucky all of this actually worked.

Backing up all archived blog content (i.e. exporting)

In addition to backing up individual posts, what else should you do to back up your blog content? It is a good idea to periodically back up your content in case the site goes down or disappears.

WordPress, for example, has an "Export" feature currently under "Tools":

Blogger has an "Export content" feature under "Settings" and "Basic":

Other considerations in backing up blog content

Other things to think about when determining how you are going to back up blog content:

• Think about the format you are exporting the content into. 
• What about the blog template, especially if you have customized it? On Blogger it doesn't hurt to grab the template HTML (copy from the Template > Edit Template page). In WordPress, keep track of the plugins you have added.
• What about blogger profiles? And other pages added such as with WordPress?
• Will the content you capture allow you to sufficiently replicate the blog later? Move to another platform?
• Where will you store the backup versions of the site? Think about the measures you typically take to back up important content. You may wish to do the same with your blog content.
• How often will you back up content?  It is a good idea to stick to a regular schedule. Will you back it up daily, weekly or monthly?
• Who will be in charge of backing up the site? Who will fill in if that person is away?

Full post as published by Connie Crosby on August 08, 2011 (boomark / email).