Do ALL you folks reading my blog back up your computer files? I believe most people do.
NOW . . . How many bloggers backup their blog? To be honest, until recently, I didn't either. I've read other people's horrifying stories of how they lost their blog and went scrambling for help to retrieve all those precious thoughts and images!
Can you image if you'd been blogging for two years, and posted 500 posts, and one day it was GONE? Everybody's posts are different and unique so we need to backup our posts to ensure we don't lose our data if the web server crashes.
I found this FREE web service called BlogBackupOnline that's basically an Insurance Policy for Blogs!
http://www.blogbackuponline.com/ is a application that will backup your blog, including jpeg, gif files etc. Signup is simple, and after your registration, they will maintain your blog with daily incremental backups so there's no more sleepless nights.
Getting Started
You get started by filling out a simple registration form. An email will be sent to your email account verifying your status.
Full Backup
After completing the registration of your blog URL you're ready to do your first full backup. Times for this process will vary depending on quantity of posts and number of images. This first one may take a while? My http://www.AppraisalScoop.com blog has 520+ posts and about as many comments and (I didn't sit and WATCH) I'm pretty sure it was done in well under 30 minutes?
Daily Backups
After the first Full Back up, BlogBackupOnline will do the rest. Daily backups will continue automatically, saving any amendments, new posts or comments. Sooooo, at worst, you'd only lose one day's data.
Restoring Blogs
After you have fully backed up your blog it can be restored to the same blog location or you can send it to another blog platform. Current maximum storage is 50Mb and from what I see most blogs should be with this limit.
Switching Blog Platforms
BlogBackupOnline has 11 supported blogging services (Blogger, Friendster, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Multiply, Serendipity, Terapad, TypePad, Vox, Windows Live Space, or WordPress). The site is a great tool if you ever decide to move your blog from one platform to another. After you've backed up your blog, BlogBackupOnline can bring all of your old entries into the new service.
Now that my site's backed up I don't need to worry and can sleep easy at night, Can You? Not often you can get free insurance but using this free web application there's nothing to lose.
Author: Brian J. Davis, RAA - Brian Davis & Associates - Brian has over 23 years of appraisal experience in Central, IL and hosts the Appraisal Scoopblog and the WinTOTAL Users Group an email forum for appraisers.
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