Imagine how you would feel if you lost your entire blog due to an error you did not make?? This just happened to wonderful West, who used to post at West517.wordpress.com and is now rebuilding her blog from the ground up.
For those of you who have, like me, been following West, you know how incredible her images and words and and what a lovely human being she is. So, if you haven’t yet reconnected with her, do so at west517photos.wordpress.com. And if you haven’t yet seen West’s work, do yourself a favor and get in on the action. You’ll love what you see!
Ohmygosh, how do I NOT do that? Do you know how she did that?
Thanks for the introduction to West! I’ve not visited but will ๐
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I’m not exactly sure, Laurie. West said she had someone do the “transfer” for her. But if it was just a name change, that should not have required transferring anything. In any event, good lesson to let WordPress engineers help should I ever decide to transfer my blog! And you’re gonna love West’s blog! ๐
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Very nice
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West has a wonderful blog, Luis. I don’t know if you’re a follower of hers, but if not, I urge you to visit!
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yikes!! How disheartening! But Beautiful images!
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West is a trooper and I’m sure will have her blog back in “fighting form” in now time, Cybele. So glad you like her images ๐
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๐ it’s a lovely blog!
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๐
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You just reminded me to backup my blog. Eep. I do not know of West517, but I will check it out.
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Definitely check her out, Nic! And, yes, I need to do that too, though even doing that is leaving me a bit apprehensive. Do you backup regularly?
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How can you back up a blog that is created on WordPress? Deos WordPress have a special backup utility? At the moment I can backup my web site because the files exist on my computer, but not WordPress.
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Hi, Sherry! The only way I know of to back up your WP blog is to export it into an .xml file. You do that by going into you admin panel, clicking on tools, and then selecting export. From there, I choose “All Content.” Per the WP site, this file will contain all of your “posts, pages, comments, custom fields, terms, navigation menus, and custom posts.” Unfortunately, it will not contain any of your media. So if your media files only live on WP, you should make it a point to download the images to your computer so you have a copy of what’s in your library. I don’t think there is a batch download option, which makes this a hassle. Here’s a link with more information: https://en.support.wordpress.com/export/
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I should, but I haven’t been. It shouldn’t be a scary event. Go to My Sites->WP Admin->Tools->Export and it will ask you how much you want to save (I usually do All Content) and where you want to save the file on your computer. It saves it as an .xml file and has the date as part of the file name. Then you can treat it as any other file you have where you back it up externally (off your computer) as well. ๐
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I did some research this morning and found out that the .xml file does not contain any images, only the links to the images in your media library. While WP confirms that there really is no need to “backup” your blog because it does it for each of us, this media library issue becomes big if you want to change platforms. Then WP says before deleting your old blog in favor of your new blog, make sure you download the images you want to you hard drive. If you delete you old blog before doing this, all those images are lost.
Now, for me, I do have copies of all my uploaded images kept in folders labeled with the post names. The ones I have deleted from those folders are all the images everyone has sent me for 1PF and ABF. Not that I have any plans to move platforms, but before finding all this out, I had often thought my over-obsessive organization of post photos might be too over the top. Now I’m glad I have done that. I may begin to download all of the participants photos back into my folders, just in case. Then I could recreate each of those posts if ever something happened to my blog
So bottom line, exporting the .xml file is not a mirror of your blog. It only saves the text portion. But I’ve gone ahead and exported just to make me feel better, and you’re right, it took seconds.
Thanks, Nic!
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Wow, I did not realize that the images weren’t in there, but it stands to reason since the .xml file was so small. I have all my images on my computer, but organized by when I took them. The date is also part of the image file name. Since the .xml file has the links to the image files I wonder if I could still figure it out if I had to rebuild. Definitely something to think about. As a side note, for the most part our blog is ‘safe’ as long as we don’t change platforms. I have a food blog that I haven’t added to since I started this photo blog and it is still up and running with no maintenance required on my part. It is linked in the background to this blog, so in essence it isn’t considered ‘dead’. But it does occur to me that I don’t remember when the last time I backed that one up.
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By linked to, I mean that I can access both blogs from the same area. ๐
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Believe me all of us bloggers never think of this happening to us, but this shows that anyone of us could loose our blogs at any time unless we have them backed up some way. Thank you so much Stacy for letting us know about this and reminding us we all should back them up so we won’t loose them totally.
I also want to thank you for bringing to our attention this wonderful blog West517, of which i am on my way now to check out.
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West is the second person I know that this has happened to, Mitch. I know there is a way to export a copy of our blogs but I’m even fearful of pulling that trigger. Yikes!
Thanks for checking out West’s blog. As I said, she’s rebuilding, so only half a dozen posts at this point, but I just love the beauty embodied in everything she posts. Pure delight!
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West is so nice, i liked many of her photos and posts and commented on several and started following her. before i knew it she liked several of mine and started following mine. I agree, she has some really beautiful posts and I absolutely love her Orange Canna, which she sent me a thank you for telling her the name of the flower she did not know but that it was just a striking orange, (I wish I had that one) ๐
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Oh, so glad to hear, Mitch. Thank you ๐ You won’t be disappointed!
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Ugh. Every bloggers nightmare. I hope she gets things up and running ok.
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She’s already at five posts, Mary, so that’s a start ๐
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