For my next party trick I'm going to show you how to perform an entire backup of your Blogspot (aka Google's Blogger) blog in three idiot-proof steps.
This technique requires no software other than a web browser so you can put your offline site sucking tools back in their box. Neither will any template modifications or configuration alterations be necessary. Your backup will consist of a single html page containing every entry ever published in sequential order, a handful of miscellaneous CSS files, plus any images you have posted, no matter where they are hosted.
Should disaster strike you won't be able to use your backup to instantly restore you.blogspot.com as you might with an automated import script, but likewise this would be the case if you instead chose to follow Google's tortuous advice (link now dead and not saved by archive.org), or employed an offline browser (which I should point out would save multiple copies of the same posts in addition to all kinds of superfluous fluff).
Here's the procedure...
1. Scroll downwards through the list of dates in your 'blog archive' sidebar until you reach the year in which you began posting and click on the link.
The URL - minus the spaces which have been inserted to trigger word wrapping - in your address bar will look a lot like this:
3. Make your adjustments, press return and then save the output in "web page, complete" format (if you're using Firefox) to a safe place on your hard drive.
The result will look identical to its online counterpart so can easily be absorbed by the naked-eye (as opposed to an RSS interpreter for example). Beats pulling rabbits out of a top hat, eh.
This technique requires no software other than a web browser so you can put your offline site sucking tools back in their box. Neither will any template modifications or configuration alterations be necessary. Your backup will consist of a single html page containing every entry ever published in sequential order, a handful of miscellaneous CSS files, plus any images you have posted, no matter where they are hosted.
Should disaster strike you won't be able to use your backup to instantly restore you.blogspot.com as you might with an automated import script, but likewise this would be the case if you instead chose to follow Google's tortuous advice (link now dead and not saved by archive.org), or employed an offline browser (which I should point out would save multiple copies of the same posts in addition to all kinds of superfluous fluff).
Here's the procedure...
1. Scroll downwards through the list of dates in your 'blog archive' sidebar until you reach the year in which you began posting and click on the link.
The URL - minus the spaces which have been inserted to trigger word wrapping - in your address bar will look a lot like this:
http://kookosity.blogspot.com/ search?updated-min= 1999-01-01 T00%3A00%3A00Z&updated-max= 2000-01-01 T00%3A00%3A00Z&max-results=132. The URL in this example instructs Blogger to display all the posts created between the first day of 1999 and the first day of 2000, though if you extend the 'updated-max' date to reflect the date of your most recent post (or just set it way ahead into the future) and boost the 'max-results' limit to include all your entries you can force Blogger to cram everything onto one page.
3. Make your adjustments, press return and then save the output in "web page, complete" format (if you're using Firefox) to a safe place on your hard drive.
The result will look identical to its online counterpart so can easily be absorbed by the naked-eye (as opposed to an RSS interpreter for example). Beats pulling rabbits out of a top hat, eh.