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16 January 2011

blog tools - importing and exporting

Just last week, I noticed a few Blogger features I'd never noticed before and thought I'd mention them here just in case any other Bloggers out there were interested. Under the Basic Settings tab, you can Import, Export, or delete your blog.

Why might this be useful? Well, I for one was getting a bit Blogged down. I had a total of 6 blogs - a private journal I kept prior to having a public blog, a recipe blog I started and didn't keep up, a blog for a bible study we hosted for a while, etc. While I didn't want to maintain 6 different blogs, I also didn't want to loose all the precious content I'd spent so much time on!

So, to streamline my blog life and keep only what I need and want to maintain here's what I did:

1. I exported the content of the blogs I didn't want to keep online. I will eventually delete these blogs (step #2), but first wanted to save everything. Essentially exporting saves a "blog" file on your desktop computer. A backup would be another way to describe it. The file is a XML document ... just in case anyone cares to know that!

2. I deleted the blogs I didn't want to maintain. For me, this was 4 blogs. Blogger doesn't permanently delete the blog immediately. Deleted blogs can be restored within 90 days before they are removed forever. Blogger also reminds you to export your blog (step #1) before you delete it.

3. I imported the content of my deleted blogs to the blog I want keep. For me, that is this blog, http://abeautifuldayinok.blogspot.com. All you have to do is find the "blog" file (i.e. XML document) you saved to your computer in step #1 to complete this step. Blogger asks you if you want to publish everything you are importing or if you want to import all the content as draft posts. This is what I did for now. I now have all the content from 5 of my blogs into one (the four I have deleted and the one I am keeping)!

My goal in the near future is to get all the imported blog posts published on this blog so everything will be in one place. I am not sure if the posts will pop up in people's Google Readers or not when I post them. I apologize in advance if one day you have 50 unread posts from me dated 2007-2009!

Happy blogging everyone!

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