Back. Up. Your. Blog.

One click.

One click will save to your hard drive all the posts and pages on your blog, published and in draft. Comments, too.

Another click will save your blog's theme.

Do I need to say it?

Back up regularly or enjoy the piquant bitterness of regret.

If you blog regularly and you fail to back up regularly, there is one thing I guarantee.

You will be sorry.

How To

The backup option for posts and pages and comments is in your settings at Manage Blog > Back up content.

For your theme, it's an option on the orange drop-down menu on the Theme page.

How often to back up is up to you. It depends on you, how often you add to your blog, and how okay you are about losing stuff. I try to do it quarterly.

How you store these is also your choice. One idea: Keep a backup folder for each blog. Label your backups with the date to keep things straight.

Drafts Included

Because of a design flaw in Blogger, is is especially easy to delete an unpublished draft while working on it.

If you've backed up the blog, though, you will at least have access to the draft as it existed at time of backup.

Gadgets Included

Google still warns, in some places, that third-party gadgets will not be included in the backup process.

Well, the bad news is that Google no longer allows third-party gadgets at all. But all the gadgets that remain are included in the backup process.

Simpler, if not necessarily better.

Backups are for Restoring

The only thing these backup are good for is for restoring some or all of your blog, including reverting to a prior version of your theme should that prove necessary.

You can also use the backup file to transfer your content to another blogging platform, if that platform can read the backup file.

You can't use the backup to read your blog offline.

Be Prepared

I hope you never have to use these. But odds are you will someday.

Extra points if you also back up your computer regularly. If you don't, I suggest saving at least the most recent backups of your blog to Google Drive.

Update: This post was revised to reflect the new locations of the backup controls in Settings and Theme.