How To Back Up Your Blog (2017)
Hi all! With the spate of accidental blog deletions recently, I thought I’d write up a little post about a Python program by @discoinferno that I used to back up my blog!
My entire blog, all 57,649 posts at the time of backup, are now stored on my computer’s hard drive. 40 gigabytes of blog! It took about 8 hours to download, and I feel so much safer having it all saved.
Obviously I haven’t gone through the entire file to make sure all the photos and such are there, but I have gone through and spot checked, and it all looks great.
If you want to use the program I used, here is what you do:
1) Go here.
2) Click the green “Clone or download” button.
3) Click “Download ZIP,” and put the .zip file wherever is convenient for you. I put it in Documents, but you can put it in your default Downloads folder if that’s easier.
4) Unzip the file. In Windows, you can just right click and select “Extract all” from the menu. If that doesn’t appear, you may need a program like WinRar, which is free and downloadable online.
5) In the unzipped folder, tumblr-utils-master, there will be a folder with the same name. Double click on that and take a look at the files. You are going to click on the file called “tumblr_backup_for_beginners.md” and tell Windows to open it in Microsoft Word or whatever word processor you use.
6) The instructions in that file are amusing and easy to understand, and they will walk you through the rest of the process! Just follow them exactly, and you should be all set!
Additional notes before running the program:
1) PLUG IN YOUR LAPTOP
2) You’re going to want to go into your power settings and change the settings that make your computer turn off the screen, go to screensaver, or sleep after certain amounts of time. You don’t want to have to restart this process two hours in, trust me lol
3) Make sure you have enough space on your hard disk for your entire blog. I don’t know what happens if you don’t? I assume the program just stops, which is a lot of wasted time.
Good luck!
EDIT: This does not back up videos unless you download another package. Check out the “tumblr_backup.md” file for more info.
This still works right now.
It’s a simple bit of following directions. I’ve never coded in python before, and I followed the built in beginner instructions from the .zip and it works out just fine.
I recommend if you are wanting to back stuff up, do it with this. I started the tumblr backup about a week ago and it is still not done nor is it available to me to download yet. I can’t see me getting that before the 17th either, given that there’s big old swathes of it they will want removed.
looks like it still works! thanks, @twocatstailoring
