How to do a backup of your Blogger Blog in case Blogspot Shuts you down

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 15^th 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!