Backstage at the Blog: X is for .xml

27 thoughts on “Backstage at the Blog: X is for .xml”

1. You have so many good tips. I love to learn something new and there you are sharing your knowledge. Thanks.

2. Forgot to mention, I use MarEdit to write my blog and then upload it to wordpress. That way my back up is built in and I have a copy on my computer before it’s uploaded. I started with MarsEdit because I have such intermittent access to the internet, that I had to write offline and post when I could.

   1. Your way sounds quite useful for someone who might not have Internet access. I’m also still not sure how to expand the .xml file into something I can manipulate, other than online.
      I’m glad you like the tips! 🙂

3. Thanks for the reminder, I hadn’t backed up in ages…

4. As a P.S. do you know a way of converting the xml file into something resembling text? I write a lot of my posts directly in WordPress and I’d like to dump them all in a word doc.

   1. I was kinda hoping I could nudge a few people into making their backups. 🙂
      I haven’t been able to turn the .xml into text yet, but I just do a copy/paste from the WordPress screen if I need to edit it in Word or Scrivener.

      1. Hehe it worked! My problem is I wrote all of my daily blog in WordPress last year and I’d love to collate all my posts into a book (just for me) but the thought of copying and pasting 538 posts fills me with horror!

         1. That’s great to hear! I will have to give that a try sometime.

5. I export my blog often. Hate to lose everything.

   1. I know, I can’t imagine how frustrating that would be!

6. I think I love you.

   I write each of my posts offline in a word doc and then cut and paste the published posts into the same document, so each one contains both a first-draft version of the post and the final published version. I saved it all on a flash drive.

   Unfortunately, the flash drive crapped out on me earlier this week (as you know), and I didn’t have it backed up anywhere. Poof. Gone forever.

   I’d never thought of backing up my whole blog, and if I had, I would never have suspected that doing it could be such a simple process. I’m going to go do that right now.

   Thank you for a really timely and helpful post!

   1. You are so welcome, Melinda!
      I was thinking of you as I polished this post up. The best part is that the media and comments and the all the rest are backed up as well.
      I know there are even some writers who use WordPress in Private mode to write drafts and/or journals, which makes a backup especially vital.

      1. Hmm. Private mode, you say. I’ll have to try to figure out how to do that. In my flash drive crash, I lost everything I’d written in my journal since May of 2012. All my HTTS stuff, too, and the current HTWAS, which I’ve now given up on without even starting. Oh, it hurts, it hurts . . .

      2. OH NO!!! That IS devastating, Melinda. 🙁
         You could also try journaling at 750 words.com (in my sidebar under links) I think it’s gone back to free, (I used it for a long time, until they decided to start charging a nominal fee.)
         But I checked back there recently and they still have all my stuff from 2012, password protected, of course.

         And, you know, I’m just starting to realize, that I’ve got lots of stuff like this to share! A to Z might be just the beginning of some fun blog posts for me. 🙂 I just need a catchy name for it …

7. You should be getting a blogging instruction award for your posts. These are SO valuable and simply stated. I had no idea how to do a backup, praying nothing would happen. Thank you so much for this and all your posts. Can you puh-leeze come be my livein geek fir a week or two? I can pay you with a shitload of Useless Stuff or Vintage Bracelets – your choice:-)

   1. Thank you so much, Sammy! 🙂
      I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested in my little tidbits, but I’m so happy to share the tricks I’ve picked up in my blogging adventures.
      Vintage Bracelets would be wonderful! I just wish I knew enough to classify myself as a true geek. 😉

      1. Well if you don’t live up to geek billing, I’ll pay you off in Useless Stuff 🙂

8. (Uh, where is the Tools menu? I can’t find it. *insert red face here*)

   1. Try the upper right hand corner of the black bar, hover over your name, and a menu will appear. At the bottom of that menu you will see the name of your blog (melinda hagenson). Take your cursor over the name of the blog, and you’ll see the dashboard option. Scooch over that and open the dashboard. 🙂
      All the way to the left is the wide black bar, and almost at the bottom is where you’ll find the Tools menu.

      1. Ah, thanks! Got it! I think I’ll wait until after I post my Z post to do it, though.

9. I didn’t know that! I write my posts in word then copy and paste to wp. Then I save the blog on one file on my desktop and the url in another file on my desktop. Then both those files get backed up.

   It sounds clumsy but some of my work is on servers that no longer exist so the url is suseless and then I do have the url for more current ones. It works and easy to find old ones when I need them.

   1. I write my longer posts in Scrivener as well, and paste them in later. I do a lot of editing though, so often the final version looks a lot different than the original did.
      I’m a big fan of whatever works best, and it sounds like you’ve got yourself a system. 🙂

10. I backup my blog with VaultPress, it automatically backups my site once a day. However, I’m thinking it is a little overkill for my small site, but my website and computer can crash on the same day and I’ll still have a backup to my website I suppose.

    1. That’s really cool actually, Felicia. I have Carbonite for my computer, but I only back up this blog once in a while. VaultPress might be something to think about for the future …when I’m actually famous. 😉

11. I don’t backup my site nearly often enough…

    1. Oh, but I was going to say, I have moved hosts. It wasn’t too terrible. I ran into a few hiccups, but all my data transferred okay. 🙂

       1. That’s good to know, Loni! I’ve heard some stories …

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