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How do I back up my Movable Type weblog?I'm really getting into blogging, but am starting to get a bit paranoid (especially after I read about how Robert Scoble lost years of his blog entries after 9/11 [ref]) and feel like I really need to create my own backup of my blog, not rely on someone else to manage it. How do I do that in Movable Type? Just about every major blogging tool I know has some sort of "export" capability and that's exactly what you want to do with Movable Type too. When you log in as administrator one of the options on the left-side menu should be just what you seek: ![]() Go ahead and click on it. You'll see lots of different options, but they're for importing blog data from a file (an export file, of course). Instead, click on the "Export Entries" tab and you'll see this: ![]() Note the warning, but don't be too paranoid. In my experience, the export does give you all the entries and all the comments, which are 98% of what I need so I can sleep at night, less worried about the hackers and crazyfolk of the blogosphere. :-) Ready? Click on "Export Entries From {your blog}" and the download window of your Web browser should pop up and show you that a ".txt" file is being downloaded: ![]() Once it's done, you have your backup. It's not necessarily human-readable, but other MT blogs can import the data (as can a variety of other blogs, since as far as I know, the import/export data format is consistent across platforms). My export, by the way, is 6.1MB, representing 6,355,534 letters, 988,862 words and 112,185 lines of text. Purely by way of contrast, the King James Bible has 783,137 words and 3,566,480 letters. Draw your own conclusion on the relative importance of these two tomes. :-)
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Categorized:
Blogs and Blogging
(Article 6848,
Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: blog backups, blog export, blog safety, king james bible, movable type, robert scoble Previous: How do I add a YouTube video to my Web page or blog? Next: How do I copy YouTube videos from other bloggers? Reader Comments To Date: 2rushskeith said, on December 13, 2008 7:42 AM:
i have a questions. Can I backup all data in my blog (MT4)?? means i want to backup including registered users and the template. something like this, i have blog called www.blog1.com hosted in server A, then i would to do backup and install in www.blog2.com in server B. Can it be done. Purpose is in case server A down or dead, i can direct user to www.blog2.com
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I have found the backup feature on Movable Type very helpful. Not too long ago, due to some miscommunication (on my part) when switching the hosting of a site I maintain, I lost everything in the blog. All I had was the content I had backed up through the process you explain above. The backup restored the content just fine and all was well...well, except that last 2% you mention. It took a little time to set the details back up, but I can still sleep at night knowing my content is backed up.
And as for the Bible versus AskDaveTaylor...it might be an issue of truthful brevity versus necessarily wordy tech jargon. :) Apples and oranges. This could become the "tech answer bible," though.