Blog Backup/Archive Solutions

I've been blogging steadily now for just over five months and a while back I got to thinking that it would be nice to have a backup for my blog...because you never can tell what might happen. I don't expect Blogger to lose all my posts, but I've wanted some assurance ever since I read a story by well known blogger, Robert Scoble, who talked about one of the first blog systems he was on lost all of his posts from years ago.

I was told last week about a free solution called BlogCollector. BlogCollector is a free download that backs up your blog and even converts the blog over to a PDF file if you want. Unfortunately BlogCollector limits the number of posts that it will download (and it doesn't tell you how many that is). It also doesn't convert the images in your blog over to the PDF. You can get unlimited saved posts if you're willing to pay the $68 fee. Overall this is a good application and was the only one like it I was able to find.

I also discovered ExpressPDF, which is a pretty cool free application that allows you to convert a website, Word document, or Excel document to a PDF. I used ExpressPDF as a backup for my blog as well. It's essentially a screenshot of the blog (or any other website for that matter) but it's a nice way to at least get a copy of your blog in a place you can control. I now have a PDF for each of the last five months and will begin to do this at the end of every month as part of my routine.

If you're interested in just storing your blog data somewhere (aside from your own hard drive), there are many free online storage options available. I've used Box.net and it gives you a free gigabyte of data storage on their servers. I came across this Tech Crunch article from earlier this year that gives a good overview of Box.net and other online storage options.

Backing up your blog may not seem like a big deal...but if you put a lot of time into what you're writing, wouldn't you want to know that you've got your own personal copy of your blog at the end of the day? I do.