Don’t Lose All That Hard Work
We often think about backing up the data on our computers, but how many people think about backing up their articles and pictures on their blog? What about the comments and discussions? What would you do, if something happened and you lost all that work? It can happen, by accident, by virus or by changing to a new host. Not everyone helps you port your old blog to your new one.
If you use WordPress for your blog, you’re in luck. There’s an easy way to back up your blog and keep it safe. And you don’t even have to be a techno-geek to do it!
If you’re running the newer versions of WordPress, you have a Dashboard where you can create new posts, update media, add or manage your links, pages, comments and feedbacks. Here where you customize your appearance and plugins, you’ll also find a menu item for the WP Tools. That’s where you’re find your back up utility.
You should back up your blog at the end of every week. You can put an appointment in your calendar to remind you to do this every Friday afternoon. That way you’ll schedule the time for it and a reminder. It only takes 10-minutes, if that, and you’ll have peace of mind knowing you can recover all that work if you have to.
If you do a lot of blogging that occurs over the weekend, you might consider making this a routine for every Monday Morning. Put a reminder in your calendar so you can remember to do it first thing at the beginning of the day. Then once you have your backup file, make sure you back that up from your pc to external storage device, such as a USB storage stick or external harddrive.
Here’s how it works.
- Once you’ve logged into your WordPress Blog, you should see a black menu bar at the top of your screen. On the left you’ll see the name of your Blog. If you hover your mouse over that label, a pop-up menu will appear. Click the Dashboard menu item.
- When your Blog Dashboard appears, look at the left side menu. Toward the bottom you’ll see a menu item for Tools. Hover over that item and a pop-up menu will appear. Click on Export.
- Now depending on where your running your Blog, you’ll see one of two screens.
The first option will look like this. Here you want to make sure “All Content” is selected, then click “Download Export File“
~ Or ~The second option will look like this. There’s no real reason to pay for a guided transfer. You can do that simply by downloading an export file from any blog location, and importing it into any new blog location. So use the FREE version. Click on the Export option and you’ll be taken to the same screen shown above. Makes sure All content is clicked and download the export file.
Make sure you know where the export file is being saved on your PC. If you need to move it to the folder you normally keep your data files in (ie: MyDocuments) then you should do so. That way when you make a back up of your PCs data files, you’ll have a back up of your Export Blog files too.
Happy Blogging!
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