How do I back up my blog?

One of the main reasons people hire me is to ensure that their family's memories are preserved forever. Let's face it - the internet is a great thing, but it can be scary to think of all the time and effort of blogging could be a vapor if something were to happen to our blogs.

Of course I'm going to recommend that you hire me to back up your blog in the form of a blog book, but I have always felt very strongly about sharing the gifts that God has given me and that means I am going to tell you how you can back up your blog yourself. No need to thank me. It's not really a big secret. It isn't technically a true back up - what I'm going to share is the way I back up my blog so that I can be sure that I will be able to eventually turn my blog into a series of books for my kids.

I use Blurb.com's free software, Booksmart, to design books. One of the many reasons I love this company is that I can 'slurp' a blog into the program and drag and drop the information into the layouts that are either preset or designed by me. If it were really as easy as dragging and dropping the text and pictures I wouldn't be in business. Time consuming is the understatement of the year when it comes to this part of the process for a novice bookmaker. (I should mention that photo books are a breeze to make in Booksmart, but the blog books take a long time.)

By 'slurping' your book into Booksmart you are able to save the text and photos to your computer in a few easy steps. If you want to use this method for backing up your book go ahead and download the free Booksmart software from Blurb.

Create a new book (8x10 size works best) and enter your password and username to access your blog posts.

Choose which posts you want for each book. IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN 150 POSTS PER YEAR I RECOMMEND MAKING MULTIPLE BOOKS which means you'll have to go through the slurping process a couple of times.

DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT chose the auto populate your book. It only makes more work if you do indeed plan to design a book yourself.

Repeat these steps for each year of posts that you want to archive.

I then open each book and under the file tab there is an option to import/export the book. Export it to a flash drive that you can store in a fireproof safe. You'll sleep better at night. I know I will after I finish backing up over 1500 posts from the past three years.

Feel free to share your own tips for how you back up your blog in the comments or ask any questions you might have about these steps!