Eurypteridi

So, you want to back up your blog from Tumblr, and you’ve got a Mac. You’ve seen all the posts flying around about Python scripts and PCs and Command Lines but you have no idea what the heck they’re talking about. You may have never even launched Terminal, or if you have, you didn’t leave it open for long.

Fear not, my fellow fruity-computey friends! This post is for you!

There are a few things you need to do before we really get going. Don’t skip these or you may make yourself very sad, or - worst case scenario - you may cause your computer to crash and have a hard time getting it to boot again.

Make Sure Your Blog is Visible

First off, in order for this to work your blog must not be hidden.

To check this, from your dashboard in the browser window, click on the little non-gender-specific human in the upper-right of the page to go to your account. Under “TUMBLRS” on the right, find the blog you want to make visible, and click “Edit appearance” below it. Scroll down and find the “Visibility” section.

Make sure the top slider, labelled “Hide <yourblog>.tumblr.com” is OFF, i.e., greyed out. (It doesn’t matter if you’re hidden from search results, or marked as explicit.)

Drive Space

Have plenty of it. Seriously. You DO NOT want to completely fill your hard drive with all those genius memes you created since 2014, and then come to find out your lappy doesn’t boot because there’s zero free space. If it starts to get close to full, you can stop the script in the middles by hitting ctrl+C. Try it again after you’ve cleared out more space.

Patience

You’re probably going to need it. If you have seven blogs you’ve been posting GIFs on every hour since 2010, you’ll want to back them up only one or two at a time. Just go through the directions more than once, using the names of each of your blogs.

The Next Bit

GO here: 

https://gist.github.com/doersino/7e3e5db591e42bf543e1

Select and COPY everything in the box labelled “backup_tumblr.sh”. There should be 68 lines of text, starting with “#!/bin/bash” and ending with “tb_clean_up 0”.

OPEN any text editor and paste all of this text into a blank document.

FIND line number eight where it reads,

BLOGS="neondust.tumblr.com aufgeloest.tumblr.com hejlisten.tumblr.com"

REPLACE the text inside the quotation marks to the name(s) of the blog(s) you want to back up. (YES, you can do more than one at a time!) Be sure to put a space in-between the names of the blogs if you’re backing up more than one blog. Also, be sure not to delete or change the quotation marks.

SAVE this as a file named “backup_tumblr.sh” on your Desktop.

Congratulations, you just created a bash script!

The Crux of the Tale

OPEN Terminal on your Mac. If you’re not familiar with Terminal, it’s inside your “Applications” folder, in a folder named “Utilities”. Alternatively, you can just hit command + space bar to bring up the search window, and type “terminal” in the field. Hit return to launch the app when “terminal.app” pops up in the window.

TYPE (or copy/paste) this exactly: “bash ~/Desktop/backup_tumblr.sh” (without quotes) into terminal and press Enter.

If you’ve done everything correctly, the script will do several things at that point:

It sets up the environment (creates folder structures on your desktop) for each blog you’re backing up.

It downloads the python script that does the heavy lifting.

It runs that script against the blogs you specified, which does all sorts of computery magic. (You’ll be able to see the progress in the Terminal window.)

When it’s done backing up all the posts, media, etc., it cleans up after itself. Meaning, it deletes the python script it downloaded earlier.

Once it’s done, you’ll find the folder or folders on your desktop named with the date you ran the script, and the name of the blog each folder contains. All the delicious goodness is inside, including an index.html which you can open in any browser. It’s contains a list of all your blog posts organized by date. This is the easiest way to see everything that was downloaded.

Things to be aware of

You can abort the backup at any time by pressing ctrl+C (this might take a few seconds). This will become necessary if you start to fill up your boot drive. 

If you have posts that contain links to external media, or sites, you will get errors if those resources are no longer available in the location you linked.

The original Python script has a number of options can be changed. If you’re feeling adventurous, or just love switches on scripts, feel free to check them out at bbolli’s github, linked below. I won’t try to use this post to tell you how to use them, or it would be about a thousand pages longer than it already is.

Disclaimer

I am not the creator of either the Bash script or Python scripts this technique uses. I’ve included links to the original creators’ sites, so please give them your kudos if you feel the need. I’m just a dude who looked over the code and parsed through the directions and got it to work for me. I’m hoping to help others by passing on the knowledge I gleaned in the process.

Having said that, you should be aware that you are using this code at your own risk. 

Any time you download code or software from an unverified source (and sometimes from a verified source), you are taking a risk. Very bad things can, and do, happen to computers when people run unsafe software and/or code. I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen to you while using these instructions, but, goddess forbid, if it does, it is your responsibility, and in no way mine.

Sorry, and it sucks to have to say it, but I have to, ‘cause,  reasons.

At any rate, good luck!

Sources:

https://github.com/bbolli/tumblr-utils/blob/master/tumblr_backup.md

http://neondust.tumblr.com/post/97723922505/simple-tumblr-backup-script-for-mac-os-x-and-linux

https://gist.github.com/doersino/7e3e5db591e42bf543e1#file-backup_tumblr-sh

Some tips for Mac users who don’t usually deal with text files: 

If you paste the code into TextEditor, remember to go format -> plain text, or else it will save as an rtf.

At least on my computer, TextEditor defaulted to changing all the quotation marks to smart quotes, so I got an error message until I went back and fixed them. 

Everything else was easy peasy. 

The plan for the 17th, when the adult content ban comes in, is to protest.

To do that, we are making as much noise either side of the 17th as possible, and using the site as normal.

On the 17th, dead silence.

People are saying log off but what they really mean is don’t open the site or the app.

But, on the 17th make as much noise as possible on every other platform. Tweet about it and post on facebook and instagram and everywhere else.

What this does is causes a massive dip in ad revenue for one single day. That does not make staff think ‘oh everyone’s gone let’s shut down.’ What it actually makes them think is ‘oh shit people aren’t happy and if people don’t keep using our site we’re out of money and out of jobs.’

A boycott reminds a company that the users (consumers) have the power to make their site (business) worthless with one single coordinated decision.

If you want to join in, here’s what to do:

Do:

Close all open instances of the app and site on all your devices before the 17th

Make posts before and after the 17th on tumblr and other platforms, talking about why this ban is bad

Make posts on other sites during the 17th. Flood the official tumblr staff twitter and facebook with your anger and your opinion

Come back on the 18th and check in

Don’t:

Delete the app from your phone (this doesn’t affect their revenue and since it’s off the store at the moment it’ll be hard to get back)

Delete your account. I mean you can if you want to, but if you keep your account and don’t use it you’re saying to staff that there’s still time to save it. If you delete it’s hard work to come back.

Open the app or website (including specific blogs)

Make any posts (turn down/off your queue and make sure nothing is scheduled)

Go quiet elsewhere. Make it clear that this is just about tumblr, not a mass move away from all social media.

Remember: the execs don’t care about anything but money. Shutting down the site means there’s $0 further income from it. That’s their last possible course of action. If we make it clear we’re not happy, they’ll have to do something or we can do more and more until it becomes too expensive.

Over Enthusiastic Bob

Pierre Soulages