Back up your Blogger blog: photos, posts, template, and gadgets

Updated for 2021: Back up all your Blogger account data

When did you last make a backup of your Blogger blog? Imagine your blog's posts or photos were inadvertently deleted, you lost access to your account, or you made changes to your blog you could not undo - would you be able to restore your blog? Make a backup today!

Your blog's posts, photos and template all need to be backed up separately. While that can be a bit of a hassle, it also means you can quickly make a backup of your blog's template before making changes or just your blog's photos.

1. Back up your blog's Photos

2. Back up your blog's Posts and Comments

3. Back up your blog's Template

4. Optional: Back up the contents of HTML/Javascript and Links Gadgets

Before you start, create a folder on your computer, external hard drive or backup device to store all the files together.

Back up your blog's photos using Google Takeout

The images you upload to your Blogger blog are stored in your Google Album Archive (get.google.com/albumarchive)
The images you upload to your Blogger blog are stored in your Google Photos, which can be accessed through Picasa web albums or your Google+ Photos.

The easiest way to back up your photos is using Google Takeout, which lets you back up your blog posts at the same time.  I've outlined how to backup your photos using Google Takeout below.

As an alternative, you can also download your photos directly from Google+ or from Picasa Web Albums Google Album Archive (get.google.com/albumarchive).

Note: this archive may not include videos you have uploaded directly to Blogger. If you include videos in your blog posts, I strongly recommend uploading them to Google+ Photos, Picasa Web Albums or YouTube first, then inserting the videos into you posts.

1. Sign in as the author of your Blogger blog

Note that if your blog has multiple authors, each author will have to back up the images they added to posts from their own Google account. If you post using a Google+ Page, you will have to sign in to the Page's account directly before downloading your photos.

2. Open Google Takeout  (https://www.google.com/settings/takeout )

3. Select Google Photos in the list of Google products

You can include all your photo albums (which I'd recommend), or just select your blog's individual album or albums.

Your images will be exported in their original upload format.

Note: at this step you can also choose to back up your Blogger blog's contents - see below.

4. Click the blue Next button at the bottom of the page.

5. Customize your download format

A .zip file is the default, and can be opened on almost any computer

6. Select a delivery method

A link to the archive will be emailed to you when it is ready, or you can have the archive added to Google Drive.

I don't recommend only storing your backup in Google Drive, because if you lose access to your Google account, you will lose access to Google Drive as well. Store a copy on your computer, an external hard drive or in a different account (or do all three).

7. Click the blue "Create Archive" button.

8. Download your Archive

When your archive is ready, Google will send you an email. Large archives can take hours or even days to create. Archives are available to download for a week.

Click the "Download" button to download the archive to your computer.

9. Check the archive to make sure all your photos are there and you can open the files.

Back up your blog's Posts and Blogger Comments

There are two ways to backup your Blogger blog's posts: you can use Google Takeout or you can export a copy of your blog from your Blogger settings.

Note that your blog's Blogger comments will also be exported, but Google+ comments will not.

Back up your blog's posts using Google Takeout

If you are creating an archive of your blog's photos, you can  use Google Takeout to back up your blog's posts at the same time.

Note that exporting copy from your blog's settings is the quickest and easiest way to make a backup if you are not already backing up your blog's photos using Google Takeout.
Back up your blog's posts from your blog's settings

Learn more in the Blogger help center: Export or Import Your Blog

1. Sign in to Blogger (www.blogger.com/home)

2.  Open your blog's Settings > Other

Click your blog's title, then click Settings in the left menu or using the quick navigation menu on the Blogger dashboard.  Click "Other" from the Settings navigation.

3. Under Blog Tools click "Export blog"

4. Click the orange Download Blog button

5. Your blog will immediately start downloading

The exported file will be named blog-mm-dd-yyyy.xml where mm-dd-yyyy is the date. A blog exported on April 12, 2015 will create a file blog-04-12-2015.xml

6. Close the Export blog window when the download is complete.

The exported xml file can be imported into another blog or viewed in a text editor.

Back up your blog's Template

The Template sets the way your blog looks, but does not include the posts or contents of gadgets.

Make sure you make a backup before you edit your blog's Template!

1. Sign in to Blogger (www.blogger.com/home)

2. Open your blog's Template

3. Click the Backup/Restore button on the upper right

4. Click "Download full template"

The template will download as an .xml file that you can upload to a different Blogger blog or to restore your original template after editing.

The file name will be template-[19-digit-blog-ID].xml

5. Once the download is complete, close the Backup/Restore window

Back up the contents of your blog's gadgets:

There isn't any easy way to make a backup of your blog's HTML/Javascript or Links gadgets. You will have to manually save  the content of your gadgets into a file, then re-add that content manually if your gadgets need to be restored

Save a copy of the HTML of your blog

If you don't want to fuss with making an organized backup of your blog's gadgets you can quickly save the HTML of your blog, which should include your blog's visible gadgets. If your gadgets need to be restored, you would need then to find the gadget code in the HTML.

1. Open your blog in a web browser

2. Select the option to Save the web page (ctrl-S on Windows or cmd-S on a Mac)

3. I usually set the file type to HTML only to create a plain text file

Store the file with the rest of your blog's backup files.


Make an organized gadget backup file

If you want a more organized backup of your blog's gadgets, you can create a file with their contents.

1. Create a new text file to store a copy of the contents of each gadget. 

This file format should be plain text, not formatted.

Windows: Notepad
Mac: TextEdit
Online: create a draft Blogger blog post in HTML mode and paste in the gadget contents. The draft post can be backed up with the rest of your blog.
Chrome: Drive Notepad app for Google Drive


2. Open your blog's Layout

3. If you have added a HTML/Javascript gadget, click Edit

3. Copy the contents of the gadget and paste it into a text file

4. If you have a Links List or Blog Roll gadget, you will have to copy each individual link in the list into your document.

5. Save the text file on your computer

Hopefully you will never need to use these backup files. But if your blog is inadvertently modified or deleted you will be happy you created them.

Updated March 2019