As
a Blogger on Blogspot.com, I’m well aware of the Dangers of owning my blog.
For
one, My personal blog, My Thoughts on
Technology and Jamaica can get deleted at any time as albeit it’s free
Hosting Blog, Google is holding the handle of the sword. Based on Blogspot’s TOS (Terms of Service),
I can get the kibosh for offensive posts that some Corporation or very wealthy
person doesn’t like, even if it’s true.
Oh
man!
This
is aside from being sued for Libel
and being forced to shut it down, especially if you want to get a job. Then
there are the hackers who can send you email and get you to click on suspicious
links to install keyloggers, thereby compromising your security as described in
my blog article
entitled “Professor
Marco Gercke warns of Scammers using Keyloggers for Spear Phishing - How to use
Keyloggers and how to Protect yourself from Scammer's American Hustle for Fast
Cash”.
Not
to mention getting threatening phone calls and being physically and verbally
harassed on the road and in some cases, being discriminated against due to my
opinion and stance on certain topics as my blog name, My Thoughts on
Technology and Jamaica, suggests! Heck, I even get harassed about my very
plain, uncluttered and straightforward design!
The
Dangers of being Independent Publisher with your own blog in the Social Media
and Blogsphere are well known to me!
Strategies to mitigate
against Blogspot Shutdown – Maintenance is key and don’t take it Seriously
And
it has actually happened to me before, truth be told! I basically sent in an
appeal via Blogger and luckily, I was able to get redress. Apparently another
blog that shared a similar domain to mine was the reason for that shutdown
earlier this year.
I’ve
even experienced DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, mainly coming
from China and other countries with an axe to grind about my articles. Most
recently, I’ve also had my share of hackers trying to gain access to my blog,
being as it’s a Google Service, in order to shut my blog down.
Still
I press on, as being a blogger, I’m a member of the Fifth Estate and as such, I
see it as my duty to uphold the independent publisher’s tradition of exposing
the public to information that would otherwise remain hidden, especially in my main
chosen Topic areas:
1.
Alternative Energy
2.
Broadcasting
3.
Telecommunications
Unlike
Traditional Media, I’m not a cheerleader for the wealthy or politicians. I’m a
truly independent publisher! But since then, I’ve decided to take no chances
and starting in February 2014, I’ve begun regular Maintenance on my blog which
involves:
1.
Accessing my blog on my Laptop only and
not at Internet Café’s
2.
Breaking up the monotony of my blog by
doing articles on different topics
3.
Checking for spelling and Grammar
mistakes
4.
Correcting dead hyperlinks to reference
articles
5.
Doing follow-up articles if News related
to a subject changes
6.
Frequent changing of my Login and
password
7.
Freshening articles by reposting and
republishing
I’m
also a lot more organized than when I’d started out blogging. I no longer write
articles and save them in a folder on the fly. Instead, I now have two (2) main
folders on my Laptop:
1.
GEEZAM – this is a folder for my
commercial writings for the Geezam Blog
2.
MY THOUGHTS ON TECHNOLOGY AND JAMAICA –
my Blog’s personal folder
Within
each folder is a set of three (3) folders organized in a theme similar to
Michael Faraday famous work ethic:
1.
WORK
2.
FINISH
3.
PUBLISH
I
do thorough research, find the pertinent research material online and download
*.pdf copies which are placed in the WORK Folder. Then the FINISH Folder is
where articles close to completion are placed before publication. PUBLISH is
the last folder that the final draft goes into on the day of publication.
Finally,
all published articles are archived in my new 8GB Kingston Thumb Drive labeled
“STARFIRE”, with a backup being placed on my 17GB Dropbox Cloud Drive as described in my Geezam blog article entitled “How
to Backup you Data using the a List of the Best Free Backup Solutions”.
Latest Initiatives for
my blog – Social Media Integration and plans to go Professional
But
there’s more to be done. To that end, my latest initiatives that I’ll be
deploying over the next few months and possibly years involve:
1.
Accurate Site Mapping of my Blog to
search for and removal of dead links
2.
Backing Up my blog Template and Articles
3.
Going Professional via migrating my blog
to my own paid domain name
4.
Sharing and reposting via Social Media
Management software, Hootsuite
5.
Social Media integration of Facebook,
Google+ and Twitter into my blog
I’ve
already taken the first few steps as it relates to Facebook and Google+
Integration as described in my blog article
entitled “How
to integrate a Facebook and Google+ Comment Box in Blogger to increase Blog
Traffic - Managing your Google+, Facebook and Blogger Profiles” and “How
to integrate a Facebook Fan Box or a Google+ Plus Box in Blogger to increase
Blog Traffic - The power of a Dedicated Social Media Profile Page”.
The
next thing I’ve already started is using Hootsuite
as my means of doing Social Media Management as described in my Geezam blog article entitled “Social
Media Management Tools help you to manage your Social Networks all at once”.
I’m
now in the process of doing accurate site-mapping and I’m also gearing up to do
a backup of my blog in terms of the Template as well as the Articles. I already
have a sitemap of My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica using Micro System
Tools A1 Sitemap Generator, the best Sitemap Generator online; a backup of
my blog is now the next thing I have begun to undertake on a regular basis!
Baby
steps people, baby step towards my eventual long term goal of Direct
Monetization of my blog and Going Professional with my own .com Domain Name to
host my blog by 2017!
How to do a backup of
your Blog – Blogger backups in case Disaster Strikes
Now
that we’re in the Hurricane Season and the possibility exists that a Hurricane
is coming and can cut me off from Internet for months at a time as speculated
in my blog
article entitled “2014
Atlantic Hurricane Season looking Fairly Quiet - How Hurricanes are formed as
Hurricane making Landfall equals Disaster”, it’s time to implement my next
strategy: Backup my blog.
I
already have physical backups of my blog articles in Microsoft Word Document
format and also in *.pdf document format as described in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to
do Physical Backup using DVD and CD and a Listing of the best software Burning
DVD and CD’s” which I do once a week with my new 8GB Kingston Thumb Drive
labeled “STARFIRE”, my 4GB Kingston Thumb Drive labeled “RAVEN”.
This
was after a scare on Monday July 15th 2013 when my then main storage
drive for articles, my 4GB Kingston Thumb Drive labeled “STARFIRE”, crashed,
resulting in losing a lot of files which I've subsequently recovered as
described in my Geezam blog article
entitled “How
to recover Data from your Damaged Thumb Drive or ZIP Archive”.
Since
then, I've also invested heavily in Cloud Backup solutions which give me the
flexibility to access my files anywhere via any Broadband Internet Access as
described in my Geezam blog article
entitled “How
to Backup you Data using the a List of the Best Free Backup Solutions”. I
also tried doing backups on an external 500GB Hard-Drive named “Beastboy” but
after it got stolen when I was placing ads at the Jamaica Gleaner's
Headquarters’, I realized that I'll have to rethink external Hard-Drives.
After
all, albeit I'd recommended them myself, they're bulky and easy to misplace or
get stolen, especially by thrill-seeking Journalists looking for a story or
thieves looking for a devices to “unlock” and resell as explained in my blog article
entitled “How
smartphones are stolen and IMEI changed – Uninformed Jamaican Police Tracking
Jamaicans even as GOJ ID Registration by Telecom Providers needed”.
To
this end, I'm doing research into smaller sized External Hard-Drives that are
SSD (Solid State Drives) and are small and portable and inconspicuously
designed to NOT look like a portable hard-drive. To do a backup of your Blogger
Blog, the steps are fairly simple and require that you backup two (2) key
components of your blog:
1.
Template
2.
Articles
To
backup your blogger Template, follow the following steps as described in “How
To Back Up Your Blogger Blog”, published September 2012, Geekalicious and “How
To Download a Complete Backup Of Your Blogger Blog”, published 8/14/2013 by
Mohammed Yaqoob, Blogger Yard.
To
Backup Blogger Template Of Your Blog
1.
Log into Blogger Account
2.
Select Template
3.
Click On Backup/Restore Button
4.
Click Download Full Template Button on the popup that will appear
5.
Wait, as it will take some Minutes to
Download Your Template
To
Download the Articles on your Blog for Backup purposes
1.
Log into Blogger Account
2.
Select Settings
3.
Select Others
4.
Click on the Export Blog Button on the page titled Blog Tools
5.
Click on the Download Blog Button that appears in the pup-up option
6.
Wait, as it will take some Minutes to
Download Your Complete Blog
Once
you have a backup of your Blogger Template and article as well as a sitemap,
you can archive them on physical media as described in my articles above.
Remember to backup as often as possible, as trust me, you don’t want to go
through the heartache of having to start all over again!
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