Finished Backing Up My Blog

On 02/26/2013 at 10:05 PM by Raised_on_Nintendo

I finished backing up my blog. It took a couple hours, and it wasn't too bad. In all there were 97 posts. I learned a couple things along the way that I wanted to share to help with the process, in case some folks are still on the fence.

For starters, I backed my blog up at blogger.com. I already have a couple active blogs there, so it seemed like the right choice.

The main complication was in figuring out how to access each blog quickly enough to keep up with my copy/paste fingers. Accessing each blog one at a time takes too long. To work around that, I kept one tab open on my list of entries, and instead of clicking the link to access one the normal way, I right-clicked and selected "open in new tab" on 4 or 5 in a row at time. Once I figured that out, things went much faster for me.

Next, I had to figure out the best way to transfer the title, subtitle, timestamp, body and comments from each entry over to blogger. The best way I found was to do 2 copy/pastes per blog.

The first copy was of a highlight of the blog's title, subtitle and timestamp, which was then all pasted directly into each blogger blog's title.

The second copy was of a highlight of the entire body and all comments, which was then all pasted directly into each blogger text box. Using this method copies everything pretty much 1:1, retaining the button images and other page assets. Hopefully, the archive will keep looking like a near perfect 1UP snapshot, although I'm fairly certain some of the links will start to become broken over time.

One downside of backing up at blogger was a persistent captcha bot kicks in after about 30 posts, and continues to nag after each subsequent post. I took about a 7 hour break during the process and the bot was still there when I returned.However, I was able to back up each entry without having to type any new text, which made for a smooth process. All the pertinent info is already contained in each copy/paste.

Overall, I'm pleased with the results. It looks pretty cool right now.

Check it out if you'd like: http://1uptimecapsule.blogspot.com/

Raised_on_Nintendo

02/26/2013 at 10:08 PM

One thing I forgot to mention, the blog archive is maximized for viewing in 1440 x 900 resolution

Matt Snee Staff Writer

02/26/2013 at 10:22 PM

I didn't have the heart to back up my blogs. There's too many and I don't want to go through them. They're gonna be just digital ashes soon. Maybe I'll regret it. But I just can't bear going through them.

Welcome to Pixlbit!

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/27/2013 at 04:00 AM

I did all 500 of mine the hard way, just viewing then copy/pasting onto blogger.Took three days at various times I had free to do it.

How many times were you asked if you were a robot? lol.

Also, your page looks awesome, and kudos for making it look like 1up and keeping the comments. Mine looks like shit by comparison. lol

02/27/2013 at 07:11 AM

Thanks. I was asked over 50 times. I started seeing repeats! Pain in the ass, but once you expect it, you get used to it.

As for 1up, I'm still kinda processing the whole thing. I'm going back through the features starting from the beginning. I'm not reading them all, but ones that stand out. I can tell by my research that I was at least visiting the site very early on, due to my memory of the content and their dates, but I'm not exactly sure when I joined and started blogging, it was '06 at the earliest. I remember because my first blog was a complaint about Gears of War.

My blog archive starts with my first blog, which is sadly a short tribute to EGM passing, which is very coincidentally ironic right now! It starts there, and then ends with a 1up tribute.

There were more blogs from earlier than that that I wish I would've kept, but the writing was atrocious and embarassing, I deleted them for a reason years ago.

PixlBit