Time for another Blogger Series post.  Throughout the Blogger Series, I have discussed the purpose of your blog, choosing a platform, creating posts and SEO etc.  Now the last thing we want is all that hard work to be in vain.  As with anything online, creating a back up is important.

Wait, you can back up your blog?

Yes, you can!  I have met a number of bloggers who were unaware of this fact, which is why I felt the need to include this post in my Blogger Series.

We often treat things online as existing forever, but that’s not the case.  You can lose your blog and all that lovely content you have worked so hard to create and upload.

Why you should back up your blog

The same reason you (should) back up your novel, because you might lose it.  This is especially important when your blog is run on a platform such as Blogger or WordPress.com where you don’t have the same level of control as a self-hosted platform.

There are many reasons why you could lose your blog.  Everything from a violation of their T&Cs to the company just closing down could be the end of your blog.

The last thing you want is to lose all the extensive content you have been building up and all the awesome comments you’ve received.

This becomes even more apparent if you’ve been blogging for a long time and built up a lot of content and a recognisable brand.

So do yourself a favour and backup your blog, then set reminders to do this regularly.

How to backup your blog

Now since I use WordPress.com and most of my followers seem to be on this, I will discuss how to backup on this platform.  However, at the bottom of this post, you will find links to articles on how to back up other blogging platforms.

Backing up your WordPress.com Blog

1) Go to the My Site button at the top left corner of your blog and click to bring up your dashboard.

2) Scroll down to the Configure section and click WP Admin

3) This will open up a new dashboard, now scroll down to Tools and select.  A drop-down box will appear of the available tools.  Select Export.

4) The Export page will give you two options.  The first is the free option where you can create an XML file containing all your posts and comments.

However, please note it doesn’t save the images.  But then again, if you keep copies of all your images, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

This is more about saving your written content.  (This option is also good if you are choosing to move to another website and can manage the migration yourself.)

There is also a Guided Transfer at a single cost of £109 (currently), however, this is more for exporting your website (images and all, I believe) so that it can be moved to a self-hosted WordPress.org site.

If you are just looking to do a standard backup, then you just want to click the Start Export button.

It may take a little time depending on how much content is on your blog.

5) Once the Export has completed you will have a folder that contains the data.  The folder’s name will include the website and the date of the backup.  (My website is actually called The Eternal Scribbler, hence why my backup folder looks like this)

Where to store your backups?

As with all backups, it’s best to store them in multiple places.  So include an easy to access copy on your computer and then another in an external hard-drive, or better yet, a cloud storage system such as Dropbox or GoogleDrive.

That way if your computer dies or gets corrupted, you always have another backup ready.

Links for backing up other websites

For those who don’t use WordPress.com, here is a list of articles on how to back up other blogging platforms.

Wix

Blogger

Tumblr

Squarespace

Medium

Weebly

Do you regularly back up your blog?

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Thanks for reading.  If you found this post useful, please consider sharing it around.  As always, leave me your thoughts in the comments below and if you want to see something specific on this blog, let me know.

Happy writing

Ari

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