TekDig» How to backup your blogger blog – TekDig

How to backup your blogger blog

Dave — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:29:00 +0000

If you ask people about backing up their blog, most will say that it is a good idea. But if they are honest, they will have to admit they don't make a habit of it. After all, it is a hassle to do, and it hardly ever helps. But when you need it, you really need it. So, I'm going to explain an easy way to make blogger backups in just a few easy steps.

A backup is simply a copy of blog that you save away in a safe place in case something bad happens to the posts you created on the blogger site. Why should you bother? Even though blogger is reliable, there are no guarantees. Lots of things could happen that would make you want to have your own copy of your blog: You could accidentally delete your posts. Or someone could hack your blog. Or you could get your account suspended. Or the blogger service could change in some way that makes you want to get out in a hurry. Maybe you just want to have a copy so you sleep better at night.

Whatever your reason, backing up is a good idea. The step-by-step instructions will give you a backup copy in just a few steps.¹ That one file contains formatting information, all of your published posts, and all your drafts. You can use the "Import Blog" option back in step 2 to restore posts. I will explain how that works in some other post.

So, you finished your first backup. Now what? I recommend you store that file in a safe place. Probably the best thing you can do is to create a separate directory (folder) to store all of the backup files you create.

Also, you should decide how often you should backup. Ideally, you would make a backup after each new post. But that can old fast, so do it after a few posts, or every Friday, or the first Sunday of each month. That way, you're only risking your most recent work. Imagine the worst-case scenario, where you loose your entire blog 5 minutes before you make a new backup. Everything since your last backup is lost. If you've only made one or two posts, that's not so bad. But if you have made a hundred posts, or it has been so long you have no idea what's changed, then you're probably waiting too long.

One last encouragement: take a couple minutes to figure this out now, make a habit of it, and you'll thank me later. Or, even better, you'll never have to thank me, because you'll never need to recover from a disaster. And that's ok too.

----------

Update: I had the instructions here in this post, but decided to move it to the "how-to backup" along with all the others.

Managing Images and Photos on Blogger

Dave — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:17:00 +0000

When I tried to place an animated image into a recent blog post, I learned that Blogger isn't timid about modifying the images I upload. I naively expected Blogger to keep the file intact, but I pretty quickly learned that it converts all images to PNG format, and it scales images to a smaller size if they are too large. The moral of the story is that you can't count on Blogger to take care of your image files. You'll have to put in a little extra work to keep them in shape.

First of all, blogger converts everything you upload to the PNG file format, and looses the animation in the process. That's true even though the filename ends with ".gif". For example, this little guy started out as an animated GIF. But when I uploaded the file, blogger converted it to a static PNG image (even though it still had the GIF extension).

Firefox shows the true format if you right-click the image and choose "Properties":

Secondly, blogger reduces the size of large images that you upload. The dialog box above is 400 by 147, but it started out on my computer as 642 by 236. That means some of the detail is lost. If you zoom in on that image, you will find that the text isn't any easier to read. And if it were a family photo, you wouldn't be able to get a better look at how I've aged over the last year.

What to do?

If you simply upload to blogger, then you give up control. Most importantly for photos, you will not be able to see high-resolution versions. To avoid those limitations, you can upload your images to a photo sharing site and then link to them in your blogger post. Fortunately, there are plenty of free options for hosting images:

flickr is a very popular site. They host millions of photos.
photobucket seems like a popular option for blogger folks.
google docs really isn't designed for photo sharing, but lets you upload files. Just be sure to "share" the file so that people reading your blog can get them.

No matter which service you use to host your images, once you have them uploaded, you can use the "Insert image" option right here in the blogger editor to include it.

You should link to a small version of the image, and then make the image a link to the page that has the larger sizes. This photo is an example where I used the "small" image from flickr, and changed the link to go to the image page itself. I have to admit it takes a little fussing around to get this right. But now that its done, you can click on the photo to take advantage of the features that flickr offers.