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Friday, March 22, 2013

Bling Out Your Blog ~ Backing Up Your Blog Template

(this is the second in a series for those of us without a web design degree, on how to work with HTML code, widgets and the Blogger Template Editor  ~ all tutorials will be for Blogger hosted blogs. The first few tutorials will focus on "the basics", for those who have never attempted to change anything since originally choosing a Blogger template. The subject matter will become more involved as the series continues.)



How To Back Up Your Blog Template
(please see the **disclaimer at the bottom of this post)

So. Did that just strike the fear of blog into your heart and mind? Did some of you cringe at the mere thought of fiddling with your blog or it's template? Don’t feel bad. I felt the same way, once upon a time. Then, one day I made a decision. I decided to be brave and delve into the depths of template editing. And ya know somethin’? Not only did I really enjoy it… I became a little bit addicted. LOL

You see, Blogger makes it pretty easy with their template designer. Much easier than you would probably think, actually. I have a tutorial coming up in the not too distant future that will give you the steps to make some fun changes to your template, but before you do that, the most important step you must take is to back up your current template.

Why? Well, we all have those days when things just don't seem to want to go our way and in case you change your mind, get carried away, or things go horribly awry, you'll want to have the option to go back to the blog template that you started from. So, how do you do that? Well, Blogger makes that a snap, too. Here’s a quick tutorial:

Go to your Blogger dashboard.

Capture of Template page

Choose “Template”.

In the upper right corner, you’ll see an area that says: “Back Up/Restore”

Click on that and this window will appear:

Capture of backup restore window

Click on “Download Full Template” and a new window will appear, asking you to save the file. Most computers are set up to save files to your “Downloads” file on your desktop. That’s where I keep my backups, but you can store it wherever you prefer.  Click “Save” and voila! you now have a saved copy of your blog’s template!

If the time should ever come that you wish to restore your older template, just repeat the “Backup/Restore” step above, but when the window appears, choose:

“Upload a file from a template on your hard drive”.

Your downloads window will pop up and all you have to do is choose the appropriate template file and click “Open”.

The name of the template will show in the next window and it will say “Upload” right underneath it. Click on that button and ta-da! your original/old template will be restored!

Whether you're making changes to your template or not, it's not a bad idea to do this a couple of times a year. If you're changing your template frequently, say... with the seasons, you might want to do it every three months. We all know how much work we put into making our blog esthetically pleasing and enjoyable for readers, so why take the chance of losing all of that work, if your computer just happens to crash out of the blue or a nasty little virus somehow slips past your anti-virus carrier's watchful eye?

Backing up data to a portable drive (USB Drive) or an exterior hard drive, is an easy way to have a virtual insurance policy for your blog. An exterior hard drive has significantly more memory capacity, which is excellent for backing up your entire hard drive, but the smaller, more portable flash or thumb (USB) drive is made for backing up individual files, like your blog template or your photo or music files.


Thumb drives are also really inexpensive these days. They come in very basic versions or there are all kinds of super cute and creative styles and configurations to choose from. Like most everything, there are totally blinged out versions that you can purchase, but a decent, basic portable drive will usually run you between $5 and $15. In my book, that's certainly not a lot to pay to have some peace of mind. Plus, they fit in your pocket, purse or brief case.

I found a few examples below, but there are literally thousands more out there to choose from. It's at the point now where you can even pick them up at your neighborhood convenience store. It doesn't get much easier than that, does it?

Basic Styles

Novelty Styles
Don't forget to check back for new "Bling Out Your Blog" tutorials, where I'll go over lots of fun, easy ways that you can change up your template or layout and add fun graphics, widgets and features to your blog. And remember, if you follow this blog through RSS, email or one of the other follow options in my side bar, you can make sure not to miss any new posts as they come up!

In the next couple of weeks, I hope to be posting tutorials on How To Make A Custom Header For Your Blog and some of the basics of Using The Blogger Template Designer. I'm working on a tutorial right now on How To Create and Install Social Media Icons on your blog.

Happy Blinging!

**Disclaimer ~ I'm not a professional computer programer. The information I am providing in these tutorials is based on what I've learned, either through trial and error or from other bloggers who have been kind enough to post tips and tricks on their own blogs over the years. If you have any special requests for a particular tutorial or if you have any questions about the tutorials I've provided, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll do my very best to answer yourquestions and/or honor your requests, as long as I know the answers or how to do what it is that you're requesting. You can do either of these things by leaving a comment on one of my posts, or using the "Contact Me" tab at the top of this blog to send me an email. Also, feel free to offer suggestions and I'd love to hear your honest (but kind) opinion of my tutorial(s).

2 comments:

  1. This may seem like a dumb question, BUT if you are saving the template when you click on that upload are you saving the content of your blog (as in all of your posts) or just the settings of the template?

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  2. Not a dumb question at all, Rob... (I should have made it more clear in my post, so thanks for asking. I'll have to do an update to the post to explain)

    So, it's just the template that gets backed up when you do this. If you wanted to back up your whole blog, you'd have to "export" it to another source and even then it exports in html format. I guess you could sort through an html backup to find the text from each post if you needed to, but I would never have enough room on my very old hard drive to store it all, so I've never done it.

    I would imagine that you could probably save a "copy" of each post to a disk or something, as you do them. Hmmm, I'm gonna have to look into this further. Thanks, Rob! That'll be a good project for me on those nights when I can't sleep! It's gotta be more productive than my usual wandering around youtube for hours on end. lol XOXO, M

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