Sunday, October 25, 2009

Saving blogs (updated)

Once every couple months I save my blog to my own hard drive, in one-month archives. We've heard of companies who suddenly decide to give up projects, especially unprofitable one as Blogger surely is, and the sad but typically human tendency is to suddenly pull the plug and not save archives, and not give the users any warning so they can save all their work. It's insane, but it has happened so many times.

Firefox is better than Safari for this. Safari saves either as just html without pictures, or a web archive, which only Safari can open. Firefox saves as an html files with graphics in a separate folder, so it can be open from the hard disk by any browser. (It does not save the large versions of images which you could click to get, but I can live with that.)

Update: Chris pointed to this as a better way of saving a blog. I haven't tried it yet.
Update... I have now. When I do it the "export blog" way, I get a 54MB ".xml" file... and my computer doesn't know what to do with that...

23 comments:

Monsieur Beep! said...

There´s a point in that, sure.

Aniko said...

For now I could never open anything that I saved in html, but didn't really need it either. Good point, I will try to save a blog I have.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

I do the same with my blog.
Call me "overly self-appreciative", but I tend to value my little ramblings, the effort and time I've put into writing them, and want to make sure they don't just disintegrate some day, out of the deep cruel blue.

Chris S. said...

I'm surprised Blogger doesn't give admins a proper backup function. The only blog I ran I used Wordpress (free) on my own server (not free, but cheap $9/mo for many sites hosted) and had full control and access to the software, database and all files. With the amount of work involved in writing a blog over time I can't imagine not having a real backup that would allow me to move the site within a few minutes of it going down.

Anonymous said...

An excellent piece of advice. Thank you.

Dave said...

If you save as a web archive in Safari, Apple has a utility here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/webarchiveextractor.html

that will let you turn the single web archive file back into the individual files and folders, so that you can open with any browser.

Dave said...

Guess that URL got trimmed. It's the web archive extractor, here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
development_tools/webarchiveextractor.html

Chris S. said...

Saving blogs using your browser really isn't the way to go. It would be a nightmarish job to get the saved files all re-constructed into another blog.

After reading your post here I did a quick google search for backing up blogspot. I came up with this info:

http://meandthecomputer.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-backup-your-blogspot-blog.html

Apparently there is an export function that you can use to get the info outta there. If this works, and I don't use blogspot so I haven't tried it, then I'd recommend doing that instead.

While saving with the browser will at least keep your writings saved when it comes to getting it back up online it would mean having to cut and paste every post into another blog and then fixing any links or images etc.

Monsieur Beep! said...

You have my admiration, Pascal, for taking the effort of making your posts bi-lingual n'est-ce pas. I visit from time to time.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, Dave and Chris.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Chris, when I do it the "export blog" way, I get a 54MB ".xml" file... and my computer don't know what to do with that...

neeraj said...

I don't know it, but I suppose very much there is also an "import" possibility of blogspot knowing what to do with it ...

So, after creating a new blogspot account you should be able to import your xml-file into that new account in order to restore your "old" blog.

Bruce said...

I use Safari and print a month's worth of blog entries to a PDF. It's not a perfect solution but it sure is easy.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Ah yes. Not good for putting up again as a blog, but you have it, and in an easy-to-share format. Not bad.

Chris S. said...

I guess the xml file is just a big container of all the blog content. It would be interesting to see what kind of schema (format) they use. Your browser should just save the file as a download. Some browsers will show it on screen because they "read" xml files. But if it does then just "File, Save as" should get it back on disk as an xml (since xml is a textual format the images would presumably be encoded properly). As mentioned I don't use blogspot so haven't any experience with it personally. I'm just saying what I know to be generally true. An xml file is fairly generic as long as you have something to read it. For example, given an xml with your blog content I could write a small script to extract components from it and store in other formats or update a database or upload. I guess that's why they chose it for backups. Naturally they expect you'll upload to them but if blogspot shuts down xml is generic enough that it wouldn't take too much to get it into some other blog software. That's untrue of a proprietary binary format which would be close to impossible.

Chris S. said...

The PDF method is useful as a visual record. I could see using both methods, xml for machine usable backup and PDF for human readable archive. Like when you want to have a coffee table book to show your grand kids about when you had a blog back when computers had monitors and didn't just project into your consciousness.

Bruce said...

With Blogger, if your blog gets wiped out it's going to be difficult to reconstruct it. If a blogging platform you are using becomes extinct, it is going to be very difficult to reconstruct your blog. The problem of archiving in a form that can be easily put back up on the web is not a trivial one.

Archiving via PDF is me giving up on that problem. :-) Although I could post the PDFs for download.

I usually compose my blog entries in a text file, with no formatting whatsoever. I put URLs in where links and videos will go. I throw the text files away after I have posted, but they could be a source for a machine readable archive. The text files could be adapted to whatever people may be using in 10 years, and perhaps it would be easier to adapt text files than to adapt a web archive.

tom palmer said...

Why bother saving it, though? It's just fucking the dog. Nothing very profound has ever been said by anyone here or on 99.9% of blogs. Nothing against any of the people here or you, or any other bloggers, but come on - there's no significance to it. Why bother saving it?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

For me personally, because I sometimes want to see a post I wrote last year.

Or I write to somebody about something I blogged about, and I can refer to the post instead of writing the same thing again.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

... Anyway, the writer his/herself surely must think they are doing *something* worthwhile, otherwise why write the blog? It'd be much easier just to watch Family Guy reruns.

Whether anybody *else* thinks it's worthwhile is a whole 'nother issue.

Monsieur Beep! said...

Why?
Well, improving on the command of the English language.
Exchanging useful information on cameras, computers, software, etc.
Discussing the art of photography.
Establishing friendships worldwide.

I still have the floppies (that's a flexible magnetic storage disk haha) onto which I recorded chats and online conversations from the early years of this century.

Anonymous said...

otherwise why write the blog? It'd be much easier just to watch Family Guy reruns.

Some people probably do them because it's the closest they'll ever come to being published.

Some do it as a kind of promotion for their websites.

Some probably feel it is actually worthwhile.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Thanks for the compliment, Mr Beep. It's definitely a significant extra effort.

"Unknown visitor, do stay a while. Stay... FOREVER!!!" - (Evil Pr. Atombender, in the old classic videogame Impossible Mission)

BTW, I hope you've backed up your flexible magnetic storage disks on a more durable support. Like, say, high-density L.A.S.E.R.-decoded nanometric optical digital versatile disks?
(I'm sure M.A.T.T. could tell us what L.A.S.E.R. actually means. Me, I simply heard the word in a Sci-Fi flick once.)

"Like when you want to have a coffee table book to show your grand kids about when you had a blog back when computers had monitors and didn't just project into your consciousness."
Will they still have coffee table books in the future? Will they still have tables? Will they even still make ACTUAL coffee, instead of the Matrix digitally stimulating your taste buds while fueling your bloodstream with basic nutritional components?
So many fundamentally cosmic questions...
Then again, the issue of coffee's not so important, since the Cosmos is a raspberry milkshake slurpee.

"I throw the text files away after I have posted"
Not me. They're such small files anyway, so I just keep them in a dedicated folder. "Just in case".

"It'd be much easier just to watch Family Guy reruns."
Never seen Family Guy ("The Griffins", in French) yet. But just from trying the videogame adapted from the show (that baby's just CUTE, isn't he?), it makes me think it's worth watching at least once.
After I've found and watched all of The Simpsons and Futurama, that is.

"Whether anybody *else* thinks it's worthwhile is a whole 'nother issue."
And judging by Tom Palmer's opinion, not always a very big issue. ;-)

"Some probably feel it is actually worthwhile."
And some are even more pathetic than that, they actually leave comments on others' blogs, inflating the whole virtual bubble. (An INTERNET bubble, naturally!)
The saddest ones even discuss others' comments, and/or use acronyms and emoticons.
I know, I know. Supremely lame, huh? :-)

Oh, I almost forgot: "FART!"
(Because the lowest of the lowly low even try to be, get this, funny!!!)
Oy vey, the humanity.