Several times I have heard people say, "Back-up Your Blogs".  I have looked around for instructions.  Well.... Did you find them?  I didn't.  So, I thought that I would write some for everyone.

First, there are two different ideas of a back-up.  Do you want to back-up your 'template' or your 'entries'?  Having a back-up of your template is great, but won't do much good if all of you entries get lost.  I assume that your entries have taken a lot of time and energy to create and that you probably would like to have them for the future or you would not have written them.

Want a quick and easy way to save it all?

Open your blog in a browser window.  Go to your profile and check how many entries you have.  Make a mental note of this number.

Login to your account.  Go to "General Settings' and make a mental note of how many "Entries per Page" you have now.  Change this number to the total number of entries that you have written and Save.

Click on "View Weblog"

On the 'File' menu, click on "Save Page As" or "Save As" (depending on your browser).  Click on "My Documents" icon on the left side.  Create a Folder for you back-up by clicking on the small folder at the top that looks like it has an orange flower on it.  Name the folder what ever you would like.  Double click on the folder that you have just created to open it.  Click on the "Save" button at the bottom.

Go back to the browser window with your "General Settings".  Click on "Return to Settings".  Change the "Entries per Page" back to the original number and "Save" the setting.

You now have a backup of ALL of your entries and all of the pictures that are on your blog in one place.  You can view this file even when you or not connected to the web.  Open your "My Documents" folder and double click on the folder that you created.  Your file will be there with a folder of the same name.  All of your pictures will be in the folder.

Now for the hard part.  Making a back-up of your template.  Okay, this isn't so hard but there are a few warnings that I must state.  Don't save the template into a word processor because extra codes will be introduced and auto-correct will mess things up.  Make sure that the whole template loaded before you copy it.

Click on "Edit Template".  Scroll to the bottom to make sure that everything loaded.  If you see /html, then you know that you have it all.

Click anywhere in the box with the template code so you can select it all.
Then, "Select All" (on the Edit menu) and "Copy" (on the Edit menu).
Close the template without saving.

Open a NotePad file (or other text editor)
Start Menu, All Programs, Accessories, NotePad
In this new NotePad window, "Paste" the code and "Save" the file to the folder that you created for you blog backup.  (While the Save window is open: click on My Documents on the sidebar, locate your new folder, double click on the folder to open it, click Save button)
Close the NotePad file.

After you have a complete back-up of your blog, you will only need to back-up when you change your template or you have several new entries.  You can follow the above directions without changing your "Entries per Page" if you want to save just what shows on your current Home page.  Example, if you have 7 entries per page, then make a back-up when you have 7 new entries.  Remember to change the file name when you "Save" into your folder so that you don't overwrite your full backup.

If you find this useful, please leave a comment and/or link to this entry on your own blog.  Thanks, Ronda

UPDATE:  For power bloggers....

If you blog won't completely load with your "entries per page" set to a very large number, you can set your entries per page to 50 or 100 and then backup each page of your blog.  You will need to view your "Home" page (your page 1) and save it as Page1 or something similar.  Then advance to your next page as you normally would and then save it with a name like Page2.  You will need to save each of the pages individually and give each a unique name.  You might want to create a folder for your backup files before you start.  You might also want to attach a date to your backups.  I name my files, 120706Page1  and 120706Page2.  Remember that this process creates a file and a folder that have the same names.  The folder will contain all of the graphics (except some background graphics) contained on the page.