Some Google Blogger questions

[kyrathaba]

Anyone here have any knowledge of Google Blogger?

They now have the ability to export a backup of your block as an XML file.  You can use this to restore your blog if it becomes corrupted, or you can import your Blogger blog into Wordpress. 

My first question:  Does the XML file that gets exported contain images you've uploaded to your blog?  Videos?  Or just text/HTML?

Does anyone know a way to export, or export-then-convert, a Blogger blog to a hard drive HTML directory structure that exactly reproduces the blog's online appearance and functionality?

[kyrathaba]

Fifty-four views and no responses yet.  I take it I'm not the only one who doesn't know the answer to my questions

[40hz]

Can't help you with the Blogger backup file question. Your best bet is to copy the generated backup file(s) down somewhere and have a look inside.

Does anyone know a way to export, or export-then-convert, a Blogger blog to a hard drive HTML directory structure that exactly reproduces the blog's online appearance and functionality?

Any "offline browser" site mirroring app can do that. HTTrack Website Copier is one very good (free under GPL!) example. Info and download links can be found here.

HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

WinHTTrack is the Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Seven release of HTTrack, and WebHTTrack the Linux/Unix/BSD release.

Note: Do yourself a big favor and read the instructions first. This app has a slightly odd interface if you're not used to working with this sort of application. It's really important to set the depth of your mirrored link levels to something reasonable. Otherwise, on a big site, you could wind up attempting to mirror gigabytes worth of stuff you don't really want - and very likely piss off the site's host by generating too much traffic.

I'm a big fan of HTTrack... 

Luck!

[IainB]

@kyrathaba: As suggested by @40hz, you could find answers to your questions by creating a blog on Google Blogger and then saving ot to a .XML file.
I have done exactly that with two Blogger blogs and can state that:
(a) The XML file contains either images or links to your images in Picasa albums, as uploaded to the blog. After you have restored your blog on a new website though, you would be wise to doublecheck the integrity of all of the material migrated. Some of it does not seem to make the migration, and I am not sure what the conditions are for this to happen.
(b) The XML file does not contain videos, but only links to videos, as uploaded to the blog.
(c) The XML file contains text/HTML. In fact, double-clicking on it will open it in IE and you can browse it in IE - which gives a text-only view.
(d) I would suppose that you should be able to export, or export-then-convert, a Blogger blog to a hard drive HTML directory structure that exactly reproduced the blog's online appearance and functionality - but only if you grabbed the blog template HTML and then experimented with a folder structure.

Hope this helps or is of use.

[app103]

If you are uploading your images to Blogger when you make your posts, there really is no other way to do it then how 40hz suggested...with a site ripper.

There are alternative ways to publish the images in posts, though. Windows Live Writer can be configured to upload any images you insert to your own FTP space that you have on some server, rather than uploading them to Picassa Web (what is used when you upload to Blogger).

If you wanted to export the posts to XML to import to another blog or blogging platform like Wordpress, the original links to the images on your own server would still work.

Something like this is good for 2 reasons:

1. You won't have to worry about hitting the file storage limits on Picasa Web, as long as you continue to have ample space on your web host to keep storing images.
2. It puts you in full control of backing up your stuff.

Something like this is bad for a few reasons:

1. You will probably always have to pay for the storage for even just a few images and you'll need a domain name if you want the image URLs used in posts to match, even if you change web hosts.
2. Not every web host is going to allow the hot linking of images that is needed to make this work.
3. You will need to make sure that your web host will provide you with enough monthly bandwidth to support the traffic your blog gets (and will get, in case of being slash-dotted, Stumbled, Dugg, or just mentioned in a high profile blog)
4. It puts you in full control of backing up your stuff, and if you don't and something happens, you are going to wish you left them all on Picasa Web.
5. Blogger doesn't support MediaRSS thumbnails for images not uploaded through the web based Blogger post editor. Only one gallery on Picassa Web is supported and you can only upload images to that galley through their post editor. Not even Windows Live Writer can access that gallery for uploading. (this can be an issue if links to your blog are shared on Digg and some other social media sites. Either the wrong image will be displayed, or no image at all.)

[kyrathaba]

Thanks for the feedback guys.  Interesting...

[kyrathaba]

I imported my Blogger blog into Wordpress because Blogger started getting screwy.  Wouldn't let me upload images.  Just hung.  Tried it several times over 2 days -- no dice.  I like Wordpress better anyway, as far as the interface.