- Blogger now uses Google Takeout to back up every part of all your blogs at once.
- Takeout lets you schedule backups every two months for a year.
- You can still back up your theme as a single file.
- The Takeout backup will download more data than you need. Extra steps can manage the size of your backup.
Fixing a longstanding bug, Blogger can now read Blogger backups downloaded using Google Takeout.
Update: On July 1, Takeout became the only way to back up Blogger content (posts, pages, and comments). It writes as well as reads.
Update: How to use the new backup.
Takeout downloads everything in your blogging account in a single operation.
And there is a lot.
You should back up your active blogs regularly. Here is how Takeout Backup works.
Changes to Backup and Restore
"Import content" (in Settings) can now read the .atom files that Takeout uses to store blog posts, fixing a longstanding inability to do so.
Blogger in Draft is Google's "beta" channel. I expect this feature will roll out to all of Blogger at some point, replacing the current backup. Update: And it has.
Meet Google Takeout
You can specify Blogger data only, but a full download will also include (for instance) everything in Google Photos and Drive.
It will include data from such applications as Google Maps, Google Calendar, and things you may not even know you had.
Blogger backup boots you directly into Takeout for Blogger only, so you do not need to exclude those other data.
Another difference is a short time lag between requesting and getting Takeout data. When Takeout is ready, it will email you a download link.
Taming Takeout backup
But there are only two files you need to restore a blog.
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| The only files you probably need |
Takeout will deliver the backup in the form of one or more compressed files. You will have to decompress them to access the contents and find these files.
The files you need
feed.atom is the backup of your posts, pages, and comments. It corresponds to the xml file from the old Backup option on the Settings page.
theme-layouts.xml is the backup of your blog theme (aka template). It appears to be identical to the xml file from the Backup option on the Theme page.
Some of the other files in the backup could be useful and/or interesting to you. However, these are the only two files you need for a restore.
You can delete the others if you like.
Use the Import options in Settings and Theme, respectively. Blogger retains the ability to import old-style (.xml) backups.
Takeout downloads can be quite large, comprising many files. In another post I will detail how I manage that.
Changes
Now, exporting via Takeout has become the sole method of backup up this content.
The solo Theme backup, including most widgets (but not all of them) is unchanged, at Theme > Backup (on the drop-down menu).
If you are just doing some theme work, you can still use this option to back up just the theme xml.
Content backups include draft posts, so having a backup provides a little bit of recourse if you've deleted a draft post accidentally.
The old-style backups download immediately to the location of your choice on your hard drive.
Takeout needs to assemble your backup and will send a download link to your email account of record when it is ready.
Make sure your contact email is up to date. It is specified in Google Account settings, not in Blogger.
Download and unzip
You have a week to download a backup from Google before it is no longer available. But you can always get another one.
You can also tell Google to put the backup on Drive or other online file services.
A backup is a snapshot of your blogs at the moment you request the backup. It will not include any posts or edits you make after you request it.
Takeout lets you schedule backups automatically every two months for a year.
Update: Slightly revised in late June to reflect the introduction of Takeout for backup (not just for reading .atom files) in Blogger in Draft. Further revised on July 1 to reflect the rollout to regular Blogger.
Links
Today's image is a modified glyph from fontawesome (CC BY 4.0).
Good reminder to back up my blog.
ReplyDelete"Blog backups get easier"... what was two clicks previously is now 10 clicks :(
ReplyDeleteIt's a fair point, though I think you exaggerate the ease of the older backup (many more clicks).
DeleteThe real benefits come if you back up regularly (which you absolutely should) or if you have more than one blog (many do).
Also worth noting: there has been a longstanding bug reported by many in which Blogger was not performing a full restore of posts and pages (and comments). This seems to be fixed now.
A simple download of an XML backup copy turned into a flight to the moon.
DeleteThanks for the tips, Adam! Does this backup include posts from all authors on a blog with multiple authors or do each author have to back it up separately?
ReplyDeleteLooks like photos associated with the blogs have to be backed up separately? It appears like that means photos that was uploaded to a blog by different authors have to be backed up separately by the respective author who had uploaded it while posting?
Good question! Backup is not available to Author accounts via Blogger, but can be done using Google Takeout directly. This will only back up content from the author.
DeleteIt's more complicated for Administrator backups. Those include every post, page and comment from every blog in which they are and administrator. However, for media files, only the files uploaded from the account will be included.
Hi, I just found out about this today. I regularly back up my blog and in June everything was "normal" when the .xml file was downloaded and today I got sent straight to Takeout and had to download all the blogger data although only wanting the feed.atom or .xml file as before. Is there a way to tell Takeout only to download the feed.atom of only one specific blog?
ReplyDeleteNo, the full Blogger download is as granular as it gets. As I suggest, just take the file or files you need and delete the rest.
DeleteHi Adam, thanks for your answer. This is also my comment. I just didn't realize that it was posted as Anonymous. So please feel free to delete this comment for the next one is rather similiar.
DeleteDon't get me started about comments! Because I moderate them (have to, or you'd see a ton of spam), there is usually a delay between when you click "publish" and you see it on the page.
DeleteComment spam is a real issue and something I have written about here.
BTW since you used your Google identity to leave a comment, you had the option of asking to be notified of replies. (I can't tell if you did.) It is getting tricker to do that, unfortunately, and yes, I've written about that problem too.
Hi, I tried to post a comment before but I am not sure if that went through: I just found out that the .xml file is not created anymore but instead you get sent straight to Takeout. As you point out the feed.atom is the file similar to the previous .xml file but is there a way to download only this for one specific blog or do I have to download all the Blogger data there is every single time I would like to save a backup?
ReplyDeleteNo, the full Blogger download is as granular as it gets. Looks like you have two blogs, so maybe this saves you a few clicks. Just take the files you need and delete the rest.
DeleteThanks for your answer. Have a wonderful weekend.
DeleteThanks for the info. Made regular backups since starting back in 2007. My questions are (because I haven't tested it) if there is any way to read the posts in the atom file without upload to blogger and the other is whether the photos and formatting of each post is also including in that atom file (as the photos appear to be listed in a separate file, alphabetically, for each blog. Thx!
ReplyDeleteUnless you are okay with sorting through a disjointed jumble of text (in which case, you can use a text reader), I know of know application other than Blogger that can read Blogger backups.
DeleteAn analogy: My computer runs a backup system called Time Machine. Only Time Machine can read Time Machine backups, though that may be hackable.
Although the format is different, the .atom files contain the same information in the old .xml backups. These have never included the images themselves, but rather the code to render them from the image files, which are on Google's servers.
The backups include only local formatting, but not the default formatting that is defined in the blog theme. So, importing backup into a theme will not affect the underlying theme.
In short, the purpose of Blogger backups is to be a backup of blogs that can be read by Blogger.
So what's the process for importing this atom file to Wordpress? Can it simply be converted to an XML file? Are all images from posts embedded in it?
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of Blogger backups is to back up a blog so that it can be restored to Blogger. That said:
DeleteAs far as I know, which is not authoritative, WordPress has not released a converter or importer for Blogger backups, though three may have been one that worked acceptably at one time. But you should really ask WordPress about that: that would be feature of WordPress, not Blogger.
It is absolutely acceptable to convert the file: the file 100% belongs to you, so you do not need permission to do that. If you are asking how to do that, I do not know. At this stage, you would have to write a conversion program yourself, or at someone to do it for you.
Images have never been embedded in the .xml or .atom files, but Takeout will download every image uploaded into Blogger from the related account as separate files.