BackupMyBlog is a new service (in public beta) that will automatically back up blogs daily (I love the heavy use of green in the design). This is a much needed tool. Wordpress, which is what we use for all of the TechCrunch blogs, has this feature built in, but inexplicably doesn’t backup images – so we do backups manually instead (and often forget for a day).
BackupMyBlog backups are fully redundant on two separate servers in two locations, so its extremely unlikely you’ll lose your main blog as well as both backups. However, the service has a 10 mb limit – something I don’t like – and older post backups are deleted as that limit is reached. Hopefully they’ll have options for more storage once the service is out of beta. Brian Benzinger has done a full test of the service and likes most aspects of it.
Most hosted blogs won’t be able to use the product – you must be able to add a PHP script on your blog server. If you are hosting your blog yourself, though, you should be using this or otherwise backing up your data.
The product is free during its beta period. No word on pricing after that.
This is the kind of thing I’d expect Feedburner to be doing.
Okay, why is everyone switching to green and blue?! Those were supposed to be my colors
I invented green!
you have to admit, it is a very calming color.
Ok, I’m going to bed. Long three days for me (see http://www.crunchnotes.com).
I don’t see how this product will get mass adoption without integrating with hosted blogs. But then again, I’m not sure there is much need/pain/demand for backup with hosted blogs either. How many people are really running their own blog servers and what would they pay for this kind of backup? This sounds like a cool project but I’m having a hard time seeing this becoming a high growth business.
sorry i have the patent on the color green, please stop using my creation
Michael when you say manually you mean select, copy and paste right?
why would they charge when a easy and free solution could be made with no restrictions on size and backed up to the users own pc?
I wish it worked for Typepad blogs!
This appears to much more commercially oriented. We (I) miss your cogent comments on Web 2.0. This looks like just another set of advertisements for new age products.
We (I) miss you.
Actually, there are several people who host their own blogs, and having an automated backup service is something that I would pay for.
It will be interesting to see how the service performs through the beta cycle, what kind of reporting there is/will be, and how they develop or add new features.
They should have used the Metaweblog API to do the backups, it would have worked with Movable Type and Wordpress, and dozens of other blogging systems. Missed opportunity.
And fuck you if you think you invented green. I’m the richest guy in the world. Ask me if I carry my wallet with me. Okay, I’ll tell you. I don’t. I’m too tiny to carry my wallet. I have a bunch of goons to carry it for me. I tried to hire Arrington to do it, he refused. So I started a new division at Microsoft, codenamed De-Arrington, you can guess what it’s going to be. We’re not in the content business, that’s not our core competence. We like to make software. Where’s my wallet? I forgot who I am. Never mind.
This is a much needed tool, and a timely post.
Online backup has been an every day phrase recently and several companies have entered this market.
I have been reading about online backup / storage news and information at
http://www.BackupReview.info for a while now. This site even ranks the top 25 online backup companies on a monthly basis. It also lists more than 400 online backup companies.
Hey, Mr Arrington: Thank you so much for this informative website. Keep up the good job.
Green and blue is sooooo Web 3.0
Usually I use the Backup plugin weekly.
Maybe I’ll use it when it’s out of beta.
One correction:
“However, the service has a 10 mb limit – something I don’t like – and older posts are deleted as that limit is reached.”
This should read “…older backups are deleted…”
Kind of obvious, but still a huge difference in concept
I have been using Backupmyblog for around a week and its a nice way to run automated backups.
does it support other files apart from image files and text backups??
This is the kind of thing I’d expect Technorati to do more than FeedBurner.
Nikit – their site says it’s just a DATABASE backup, no image files or text files are backed up…just the information saved in your blogs database.
There are quite a few opensource scripts out there written in PHP that will automatically back up ANY MySQL database, optionally saving them on your own webserver or emailing them to you.
Still, it’s a great marketing idea to target this to the Blog market and then start charging for it.
Michael, I have a question for you. How do you do backups for TechCrunch? I’m not too interested in what BackUpMyBlog is offering as I don’t mind redoing my template and 10 mb is way too little.
What I really want is a way to back up my posts. I’m doing this right now by subscribing to my own RSS feed (yes, that leaves me with 25 subscribers) in Thunderbird and saving the posts and attached pictures offline in the email client.
I like jme’s idea of backing up posts to one’s own computer. I am vigilant in mainting my own drives and further backing up my data onto DVDs, so I would feel most comfortable to just save my posts myself. I wish there was a service that would let me do this easily.
Something else we need to take into consideration are the comments. I love the way Wordpress imports all your Blogger.com posts and comments when you decide to switch.
Frank, I still don’t understand TypePad. Why in the world would I pay to blog? I’m trying to earn a little bit from it. Paying would just neutralise my 10$ from AdSense. I’ve also noticed that you have less control over your blog with TypePad. And why in the world does every TypePad user have the same damn favicon?
Richie, what plug-in is this of which you speak? I use Wordpress and am interested in having a plug-in that would back-up my posts to my HD or another secure server.
What I’m wondering is if Feedburner does actually already backup your posts. Because it does save them all on its servers and on the feed page (http://feeds.fe....com/TechCrunch or /QuantumThinking – I’m a shamelessly nasty plugger).
Btw, digg here.
Simran: search google for “wordpress backup plugin”.
PS Mike: Go back to the old design
please…
A wonderful service indeed.
Michael,
I use WordPress’ Backup plugin and the WP-Cron plugin.
The WP-Cron plugin allows you to schedule your backup nightly and be automatically emailed to you.
I don’t worry about backup of images because I use Flickr to host my images.
I blog with Blogger and it do not hav built-in backup. So I use BlogCollector from Aprise. (http://asprise..../blogcollector/)
However, this software seem like not working well with Chinese characters.
Feedburner or Technorati is not a question, as long someone provide the service. (Since Blogger do not provide such important feature)
RE: # 19 – Simran wrote:
I still don’t understand TypePad. Why in the world would I pay to blog? I’m trying to earn a little bit from it. Paying would just neutralise my 10$ from AdSense. I’ve also noticed that you have less control over your blog with TypePad. And why in the world does every TypePad user have the same damn favicon?
——————————–
The answer: TypePad is a simple yet robust user-friendly interface for blogging. It isn’t designed to create an online revenue center for redundant ads that “professional bloggers” plaster all over their pages.
If you have the knowledge and skill, you can do anything with a TypePad blog that you can do with other systems and the process is usually much simpler.
As for favicons, it’s only because the TypePad bloggers you’ve visited have chosen not to create and upload their own; If you can select and upload a file, you can have a favicon for your TypePad blog.
Still, their backup system, like all others, isn’t perfect. If and when a third-party backup program will backup everything (text, images, audio, etc.) I’ll certainly consider it as an additional tool.
Thanks, Blaze. I googled and found this. Reckon it’s any good? I’ll be installing it in a bit.
Michael, am I the only one who loves the new design? I think Orli likes it too, but I’m not too sure. I know you’re being attacked from all sides, but please don’t go back to the old design. The new one’s mighty cool. Call me mad, but I actually like the sponsor buttons. The only thing I think could be better is the image switching CSS on the nav-bar. The contrast is too much. Going from white on green, to green on white is kinda hard on the eyes.
Scottitude, I’ll have to disagree with you. All “professional” bloggers don’t “plaster redundant ads all over their pages”. Have a look at this blog, TechCrunch for example. Michael Arrington is a “professional blogger”, right? Do you see ads plastered all over the page? No. Just four little sponsor images and some text ads, placed outside of the blog content. I too am a blogger, but not a professional one. I do have ads on my site, but they’re way down in the sidebar and they’re there only so that my blog can pay for itself. Most bloggers aren’t even interested and making anything back. They just want to be able to do it for free. I would never pay more than my hosting and domain charges just to have a “better” interface at TypePad. If you know how to COPY and PASTE text, you can set up a Wordpress blog. After that, there’s not much to maintaining it. And even total Internet newbies have Wordpress blogs, they just pay/get someone to set it up for them. I’ve been looking for low-end web-design, site-construction work over the past few months and you’ll be astonished to know how many people are willing to pay you to set up a Wordpress blog for them. Offers start at $50-100.
yo, what features would you like in your “blog back up desktop app”? send a quick email to me, jme at giffo.org
so far it backs up everything to the local harddrive, haven’t got round to the GUI yet, too scared to test out the restore method yet hehe
all you need for the app is ftp access to your blog, no scripts need to be installed on the blog’s server,
just something to keep me busy on a sunday afternoon
Jme, don’t mind, but I’d like to post my suggestion here and would appreciate it if others did the same. I’d personally like to read what others suggest as well.
My suggestions for a blog-backup app.:
It should be easy to use. That’s the most important thing. Imagine your mother (if she’s, like most mothers, not computer savvy) trying to use it when you’re designing the UI.
It should be able to change the directory the posts archive to, even after one has been using it for a while. That means it should be able to automatically move all the files to the newly specified folder.
It should work with the four major blogging platforms; Blogger, Wordpress, Movable Type and TypePad. I’m not too sure Blogger supports FTP.
If possible, it should look good and should be appealing to the eye.
It should be able to backup the comments of each post as well (this is another important one).
or,
use AutoMySQLBackup: http://www.debi...mysqlscript.htm or MySQL Backup Pro: http://mysqlbac...hpmagazine.net/.
does your “mum” have the knowledge of setting that up?
It’s relatively easy to use, for someone that hosts her own blog and knows the relevant technical information needed.
However, I’m really sceptical about giving out my FTP information to, well, just a site.
I should have posted earlier to thank everyone for checking out BackupMyBlog in the last few days but it was a _busy_ weekend.
To answer two questions/concerns:
1) “Why didn’t I used the Metaweblog API?” Mostly because it doesn’t allow access to all of the tables in the blog so you can’t rebuild after a crash or hack attempt. Plus there are security concerns with it sending plain passwords over the wire.
2) “However, I’m really sceptical about giving out my FTP information to, well, just a site.” I understand and that is why there is the Manual Setup option which doesn’t require you to give out any login info.
Thanks again to everyone for checking out BackupMyBlog — if you have any other questions please feel free to stop by the forums.
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People should store important passwords, account information, documents and policies in a secure online vault
Is there any option to backup files in wordpress ??
Check this
http://codex.wo...p_Your_Database
Hope its helpful for you.
Great work on website. http://portaldi...orex-made-easy/
I was searching this information and thanks to you
it will work for me