For every single post I write, including this one, I write it first in MS Word and save a copy in a common folder on my computer. I do the same for almost every comment I leave in the blogosphere. My thought is two-fold…if I loose everything on my site, I still have all that I’ve written and with Google desktop search, I can search everything I’ve written as reference for future thought and posts.
Do any of you do the same or anything similar?
I have the same end result, but with a different method. I backup the databases of my blogs daily. I’ve made sure Spotlight is indexing my SQL dumps so they can be searched.
Watch MS Word. It inserts some coding ( ) that feed validators don’t like. Check http://forums.feedburner.com/viewtopic.php?t=593 to see what I mean.
I do the same, although for a slightly different reason. As a security measure, when I wrote the software that powers my site I built in a timeout function (mainly in case I’m in a public place/office etc) – after 20 minutes, if I haven’t clicked anything in the admin, it logs out automatically. I started to find that long posts (or posts that require research as I write) would take longer than 20 minutes, and therefore I would spend x-time writing it – only to find it disappear when I clicked send because it had logged me out.
So, now I write everything up in notepad first, then publish it. As with Tim though, I backup the databases daily aswell.
I write most everything inside the web interface. Call me crazy (I was weened on a web browser I suppose) but it feels most natual. I also tend to write in hypertext, even when out of a browser. I can’t get used to using something like Etco–I like staying in one application. I also use Bloglines for just that reason.
I have not been doing this. However, I am going to start. This is a great idea and I appreciate you bringing this weird idea of yours up.
You are weird. That said, I oftentimes do something similar using TextPad (that you use Word is what I find weird). Why? Well, because I am used to the world of the message board, the online community, and so forth. In the old days the latency might have been bad enough that the entire post that I crafted might be gone when I hit submit and the latency timed-out the post. Happened all the time on the Well and TMN when Web Interfaced replace Text Caucus v2 (the good old days with Superscoop, etc).
At the very least, I hit cmd-a, cmd-c, before I click Add Comment or Post — just to make sure it is at least in my clipboard first.
I leave a “scratchpad” open all day… the biggest reasons are to do some quick regex grepping or some reformatting (to get rid of the ugly MS Word metadata) or to reformat a bit of text to get rid of hard returns.
I highly recommend TextPad but Ultra32 is great as well.
Do You Save Everything Your Write Online?
Jim Logan admitted that, “for every single post I write, including this one, I write it first in MS Word and save a copy in a common folder on my computer.”…
Chris,
You’re right, but for the wrong reason. I am weird…but Word has nothing to do with it :-)
BTW…I didn’t write this comment in Word before I published it :-)
Cheers!
You’re all a bunch of weirdos ; )
That said, I lost twenty minutes worth of writing today when I absent-mindedly clicked a link in an e-mail and Firefox jumped to the new page…erasing my hard work in an instant : (
Maybe I’ll take your advice…
No, not wierd in the least. Most sensible if you ask me. Whether its just a couple of minutes writing a comment, or an hour creating an article, it is still time spent and the most annoying thing in the world is your work being lost in the void. I too copy, paste and save everything, ever since the day I lost 30,000 words of a first draft of a novel I had worked on. Sure, I had a printed hard-copy, but that was it. Took almost a year to be bothered to type it all out again.
Everything on my site is backed up to the hilt. Being fiction, it is harder to replace should it all fall off the back of the server one day!
Cary, I’ve had that happen to me too – so I set Firefox to open links from emails in a new tab always :)
I wouldn’t recommend copying and pasting from Word because of some of the symbols Word uses but I often copy long posts/comments before hitting submit like someone else mentioned so I have the post in my clipboard.
I recommend backing up databases weekly.
After my blog entry is published, I go into the article once again, by way of the Permanent link, and VIEW SOURCE. Then FILE / SAVE-AS the source as the same file name of the permanent link filename. I place it on my computer in my c:backupblog directory. This way, if something crashes I have the total post including html and stylesheet stuff.
I’m using blogspot though and there is no feature to backup our blog data – so I have to do something, right?
I totally agree with what you say, though I can’t be bothered to have something like Word open all the time. I use Crimson Editor now and then, but mostly I just save often.
Everytime I come up with a good idea for a post, I save it as I go through it, that way I am sure the blogging software will not lose the entirety of my good idea if Firefox crashes.
I type everything in Metapad:
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
Sometimes if I’m not confident I’ll paste into a word processor for spelling and grammar. I then paste it into the web interface, which stores everything in MySQL. My laptop runs SQL, and every night it backs up the website.
yes, you are weird, but I must admit I cut and paste my posts into word to spell check them prior to posting, although I never paste them back into WP, I just use it to highlight any errors.
With all the blogger errors daily, I have some tips to back up and recover a blog.
I also get all my Blogger posts sent to my email when they are published. That way if all is lost, I have my posts safe.
I used to cut & paste my posts into Word to run a spelling & grammar check. However I now use IeSpell (http://www.iespell.com/) to spell check my entries within my web browser or Spellbound for Firefox(http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/) on my home system.
I use notepad to store all my thoughts and draft posts but I simply write over once I’ve posted to my blog.
I’m not too worried about losing my blog data because I’m pretty religious about backing up my MySQL files.
Rachel, thanks for the tip!
I do something similar. I’ve set up a plugin for Google Desktop search called Kongulo (http://desktop.google.com/plugins/kongulo.html). It’s a very basic web-crawler, so I have it crawl my blog and my livejournal account once a week and it’s made my life so much easier. I mean, how many times do you think “damn I just wrote about that a few months ago, now where the hell is it?” :-)