Blog posts: Don't lose them

Lost blog posts.

You have probably felt the pain, and perhaps even kicked chairs, and screamed loudly enough to frighten the neighbours about it.

A post is written in the blogging post window, you smile at its artistic merit, highly polished writing, and recall the work of adding all of the hot links.

You hit the post button...

...and nothing happens, but an error message on the screen.

In frustration, you click the back button, and a look of horror crosses your face.

Various words, not appropriate for a family blog, leave your lips in a torrent.

The posting window is now blank once again.

All of that work of writing is now lost forever.

Don't let this nightmare happen to you.

Users of the Blogger system are all too aware of the all too frequent problem of losing posts. Yes, I know, I know, I use Blogger, but for some inexplicable reason I enjoy the challenges.

I guess everyone needs a hobby!

Other blogging tools are equally as likely to send your post of the year award winner into the ill defined nether regions of cyberspace as well.

Some solutions and precautions are necessary to prevent the blog post losses.

One option is to write the post in Notepad, or similar text editor, and save the work.

The weakness of this technique, of course, is creating the links. Each link has to be written in clean html code, and as a result, errors creep into the post. That equals dead and non-working links.

Very un-reader friendly.

A solution to the html coding issue is to write one link, copy and paste it as required, for each subsequent link. Change the internal link URL, and the link anchor text that appears on the clickable link as required.

Another option, and one that I use (mostly), is to copy the entire post from the posting window just prior to clicking the post button.

If the publishing fails, and the back button method is used, the newly blank page can be immediately refilled.

Rinse and repeat.

A combination of the two methods can be used as well.

Write the post in the blogging window. Copy the entire post to Notepad, and save it there for posterity.

Click the publishing button, and lost posts can be immediately retrieved from the Notepad files.

In any case, make certain that you make a pre-publishing backup.

Just in case.

Tags: posting, blogging, publishing, writing.