Jan 18, 2006

Backup your posts

Back up all your data, regularly. That is the first law for any prudent computer user. Virus attacks, hard disk crashes and simple human errors all gobble up your precious bytes in no time. And it is no different for a blogger. In a world where easy-to-use interfaces allows you to dump all your valuable posts to oblivion in a split-second, it is all the more true.

So how do you backup your blog posts? That would mainly depend on the blog you are using. I will describe a very simple method to backup your posts in one single file from Blogger, and things shouldn't be very different for others as well.

As you might know, every blog on Blogger has a unique ID. First, find out yours. Then, type in the URL : https://www.blogger.com/atom/xx, replacing xx with your ID. You might be prompted for your Blogger username and password. Enter it and you will get all your posts in that blog, in one single XML file. Save it to your harddisk or CD and you can be assured that next time you need it, you can safely find it there. Do this on a regular basis and you will never lose another post. (And yes, I did say that it was a very simple method.)

Other blogs offering RSS, XML or Atom feeds will most probably have a similar option as well. Play around with your feed to find them. Any feedback in the comments section will be greatly appreciated.

10 comments:

George Larson said...

Great advice and a slick trick at that! Thanks!

George Larson said...

:(

It seems that it does not work if you have multiple blogs?

Ranjit said...

George: Thanks, I am glad you found my tip useful.

It does work even if you have multiple blogs. The only point to be noted is that Blogger has a different ID for every individual blog, regardless of the account under which it is maintained. Find your unique ID for all individual blogs and repeat as mentioned in the tip.

P.S:
Another tip - Goto this URL - https://www.blogger.com/atom - and login with your Blogger username and password, and you will get all your blogs listed, alongside their corresponding Blogger IDs!

Please let me know if you have any more problems, and I will be happy to help out.

George Larson said...

I tried a variety of methods. The ones you've listed and going to Settings->Site Feed->Site Feed URL and what I get is:

XML Parsing Error: prefix not bound to a namespace
Location: http://georgeglarson.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Line Number 206, Column 1:(o:p/)
^

I subsituted ( and ) for < and > because it tried to interpret my message as HTML.

Guess that is just me?

Unknown said...

I encountered a similar problem. Seems like the thing goes nuts if you have ever drafted or published a post from Word.

Anonymous said...

But there's a problem. This method only backing up the 100 more recents articles.

If Blogger blog has more than 100 articles, the only solution that i've found is to make a bash script.

There's an example in
http://amalgamadeletras.blogspot.com/2006/06/hacer-un-backup-de-los-artculos-de.html
and it's easy to adjust it to your own blog (if you read spanish).

HTH

Ernesto

Anonymous said...

Thank you!
This helped me a LOT!
I have been considering backing up with a different program, but I prefer this method, quick and easy.

domestic empire said...

Doesn't seem to work. I get the same error:

XML Parsing Error: prefix not bound to a namespace
Location: http://georgeglarson.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Line Number 206, Column 1:(o:p/)

following it's refusal of my login details - even if I'm already logged in too. Have tried a variety of variations such as changing the server from www to www2 for the new blogger but the same error prevails.

Perhaps it's the switch to the new version of blogger that has 'broken' this otherwise useful option.

domestic empire said...

OK so the error report was a cut and paste of the above and not a hack attempt at poor George's site! But other than his blogger address the error is the same.

Proof reading will be the deaf of me!

George said...

Guys did you notice that this task is easier than it looks to be? In the beginning I thought "what the hell they don't have a backup feature". Well, I mean a push to backup, a single click solution. But wait. Simply enable Monthly archiving. Then click on the Month and in browser simply Save the page. The only drawback is that the full size images won't be saved. Why would you need to make full backup every time?