So those of you who are backing up your blog may have noticed that it’s taking ages to actually work. For me, it took over 48 hours for my backup to be completed. This is due in part to the servers likely being flooded with backup requests and in part because lol tumblr programming
Basically, download and extract the .zip to wherever you want. Open the .exe file.
The program will automatically read your clipboard, so if you copy a tumblr url to it, it will automatically add it to the blog list. When you select a blog, the ‘details’ tab on the right will have some options that you can change, like if you want only images, video, audio, text, conversation, link, answer, quote, and various metadata. You can also look for specific tags.
I would recommend that you select all the boxes like I have above.
BY DEFAULT, the program downloads all of your posts, including reblogs. This could increase the number of files downloaded by a factor of 10. If you do not want reblogs downloaded, untick that box.
I would also recommend setting a download location.
Each of these settings can be set on a per blog basis. You do not need to be the owner of the blog to do this.
If your blog is protected, there are some additional settings you will have to change. Read through the how to use link above for more details.
To star the process, you need to add your blog to the queue, and also hit the crawl button down below. Crawl tells the program to begin the content search on a given blog, but only on the blogs added to the queue.
From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
– don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
– archive everything on your blog you want to keep
– tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
– tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
– go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
– support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
lovingdread 