Tumbling Along

I was just semi-complaining that I was still looking for a decent way to backup my +6k posts without having to use paid services or even just wordpress (which has an import from tumblr tool that asks for permission to access your blog and also make posts), when I decided to actually put some effort into my google search. 

Results were positive: I have successfully backed up my blog* 

*By which I mean: everything that I have ever posted.  Not included: drafts, queue, likes, followers, following, comments, notes, chat. 

I followed this method (word by word), and now have a 450 MB folder on my computer with the name of my blog on it containing: 

1. Folder “Archive” (contains .html files listed by month) 2. Folder “Media” (contains gifs and images, mine has +1k files in it; might contain also audios but I have no way of confirming that because I’ve never reblogged an audio post from this blog) 3. Folder “Posts” (contains single .html files, each one a post; I have +4k files in it) 4. Folder “Theme” (contains only my avatar, but it might be a matter of if you have personalized themes or not) 5. .html file “Index” (by opening it it will give you the archive of your blog organized by month; clicking on a month will open up the archive for that month, and you’ll be able to read all the posts for that month as if you were on your blog**, except sans your theme graphic, with each page containing 50 posts)

**I can see gifs, links, embedded videos, tags, number of notes (but I can’t open up the notes, clearly), text is also correctly formatted. 

So yeah, in case anyone wants a very quick way to back up their blog, it took me less than 10 minutes. 

- don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.

- archive everything on your blog you want to keep

- tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.

- tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.

- go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.