I was just semi-complaining that I was still looking for a decent way to backup my +6k posts without having to use paid services or even just wordpress (which has an import from tumblr tool that asks for permission to access your blog and also make posts), when I decided to actually put some effort into my google search.
Results were positive: I have successfully backed up my blog*
*By which I mean: everything that I have ever posted. Not included: drafts, queue, likes, followers, following, comments, notes, chat.
I followed this method (word by word), and now have a 450 MB folder on my computer with the name of my blog on it containing:
1. Folder “Archive” (contains .html files listed by month) 2. Folder “Media” (contains gifs and images, mine has +1k files in it; might contain also audios but I have no way of confirming that because I’ve never reblogged an audio post from this blog) 3. Folder “Posts” (contains single .html files, each one a post; I have +4k files in it) 4. Folder “Theme” (contains only my avatar, but it might be a matter of if you have personalized themes or not) 5. .html file “Index” (by opening it it will give you the archive of your blog organized by month; clicking on a month will open up the archive for that month, and you’ll be able to read all the posts for that month as if you were on your blog**, except sans your theme graphic, with each page containing 50 posts)
**I can see gifs, links, embedded videos, tags, number of notes (but I can’t open up the notes, clearly), text is also correctly formatted.
So yeah, in case anyone wants a very quick way to back up their blog, it took me less than 10 minutes.
P.S. I didn’t have any issue, but to be on the safe side always check for spyware and virus threats before and after downloading anything.
this is actually really useful if you have an art blog full of years of work that you otherwise no longer have access to the original files. A lot of the art I have in the early days of my art blog are in that boat. I did this process JUST for that reason and I was pretty astonished at just how many pieces of media it backs up! (literally all of it) Drawings I didn’t even realize were sitting in my archive due to having been posted to text posts or undercuts, or untagged for years! It’s worth it if just for that, even if tumblr isn’t shutting down or deleting your blog.
Give this a shot! I have been using tumblr-utils for a while now and absolutely recommend it, as well as taking a look at some of the more advanced options it has (such as backing up posts of only a certain type, saving a particular tag, saving your liked posts, etc. – it’s well documented, and with the guide linked in the OP shouldn’t be hard to get started with).
The one thing I have sadly yet to find anywhere is a simple way to back up replies and notes (and of course the lovely screaming in reblog tags people do a lot of).
@thoughtfulfuri here’s another post that’s more or less the same as that one video post I reblogged. They’re all saying it doesn’t save notes or replies though, so idk if that’s a factor for you.
One thing though, regarding that last post: when Python saves your media and posts, it saves them to two different folders so now I have a folder full of memes and random shit from tumblr that has like no context. On the one hand, why the shit do I have pictures of a horse eating a man’s face. On the other hand, it’s fucking tumblr, of course I have a picture of a horse eating a man’s face.
For anyone that’s been having problems backing up their tumblr to their hard drive, ETD did a very quick and rough tutorial (rough in ever since of the word, poor dear is ill) on youtube for how to use this tutorial:
Hopefully him doing a quick walk through solves some of the issues you were having:
Hello dear followers! I know some of you have a lot of content you’d rather not lose in the inevitable crash that is tumbls backsliding into a pit of pure shit, so here’s an awesome solution thebibliosphere‘s computer person has put together. It’s super fucking easy to do and like you can literally see the results of Python working as it’s doing its whole backup thing. All you have to do is sign up for github (free), download/use Python, do some computer magic with URLs inside a command prompt and bang! Starts downloading your stuff. Super simple, it’s a fairly short video (10 mins) and if you’re an anxious ball of fuzz when it comes to electronics (like me!) no worries, he walks you through everything. This is good for both Windows and Mac users, if that’s a concern.
Rhio's Tunglr Stuff 