Some useful ways to backup your blogger, wordpress and self hosted blog

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

What if one day you turn on your pc, open the browser, type in the blog address and see an error message saying your blog is deleted, removed or file corrupted? You will feel extremely sad and you have nothing to do about it. If you’re on a free blog platform like blogger or wordpress.com, then it’s obvious that anytime your blog could be deleted. All of the articles, comments, widgets and backlinks will be gone.

Don’t relax if you own a paid hosting plan for your blog. Disasters, server crash or virus can make your blog and all files useless and your host even can’t do anything about it. So the best option for us is to regularly backup our blogs. Here are some of the tips to backup your blog,

Blogger blog

The latest edition of blogger blogs has an import, export feature. Just go to your blogger Dashboard > Settings > Basic.

Click on “Export” on the top and click “Download” to save your blog post and comments on your hard drive.

This is your blogger blog in XML format. Keep it in a safe place.If your blog is accidently deleted, don’t worry. Create a new blog and with the same process, click “Import” and choose the XML file from your hard drive. Check “Automatically publish all imported posts” to publish all posts and comments automatically and click “Import blog” -you have your blog again.

Wordpress.com (free) blog

Go to your wordpress Dashboard and select “Export” from the “Tools” menu (the lower left side of the window) Download the XML file in your hard drive.There’s an extra option where you can set permissions. If you select your name, then only your account can use this file(not recommended!)At the same way you can “Import” your blog to another wordpress.com blog. Now the fun is, both blogger and wordpress.com offers XML backup files which mean you can use the backup in both platforms.

Self hosted blog

Most of the web hosting service provides an automatic backup for you. You can also use those options to backup your blog and save it on your hard drive. You can also manually download your files with the help of an FTP client. After that you also have to go to your “PHP my admin” database and “Export” your blog database in your computer.

Please remember that self hosted blogs requires both all of the files from the root server and the database to work properly. You can read my friend, Javier’s helpul guide on backing up and restoring a self hosted wordpress blog.

Other ways of blog backup

The best way for backup is to save the raw copy of your posts on your computer in notepad or wordpad file.
You can use this online blog backup service for regular automated backups
Another smart way for backup is to subscribe to your blog via email. All of your posts will be delivered to your inbox regularly and even if your blog is deleted, you will still have the posts.
Creating the same blog in another account could be a better backup but make sure no one else without you and even the search engines can’t access it to avoid duplicate content.
Wordpress database backup plugin for self hosted wordpress blogs

What if I accidently delete some of my posts?

One week ago @Trulyana tweeted for help that she accidently lost her blog post. I tried my best to help her recover that post and at the end she got it back.Now lets see what we can do for lost/ deleted posts? If you have it on your pc, or in the drafts folder of your blog then you’re saved. Just re-publish it again. If you don’t have any backups then you have to search your blog’s RSS feed for that post. RSS feeds take time to update with the new result so you might get it back from there. If it’s not in the feed then the last hope is your email subscribers. Contact your email readers about it and get it back from them.

How often should I backup my blog?

If you post daily, then backup your blog once a week. You can also choose to backup every two weeks or every month.

Right after reading this post, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site or with a Stumble Thumbs Up! and then backup your blog if you haven’t done it yet!