Holy Cow! It works! (Or, how I backed up my entire LJ to IJ and GJ)

[liz_marcs]

I did it by following these instructions. (Thank you brown_betty!)

Every single entry from my LJ is now backed up to InsaneJournal and GreatestJournal. As a test, I also backed up some fanfic over to JournalFen.

My findings:

Backing Up to InsaneJournal

• Lightning fast: all 972 posts were transfered over to InsaneJournal in less than 10 minutes
• There were few surprises. The minor buggy stuff  (i.e., reminding LJ-SEC that it was okay to transfer locked and private posts over ) reported by brown_betty was exactly as described.
• As described, the following were not transfered over: tags, user pictures, moods, or comments.
  
• Also not transferring over: embedded media ( found by liz_marcs) and LJ Polls (found by justhuman).
  
• Does not load your memories automatically. That's something you have to do by hand.
• All security settings appear to be maintained, i.e., my few flocked posts remained flocked and my few private posts remained private. (Note: brown_betty in her post notes that filtered and flocked posts may get randomly assigned to new filters. Please be aware of this as you proceed.)
  
• LJ-cuts were likewise maintained.
• There's some weird editing issues around the "lj-user" names in the post (i.e, they're put on separate lines), but that can be easily remedied if I feel like fixing them.
• Overall experience: Excellent!

Backing Up to GreatestJournal

• Slow: it took almost 30 minutes to transfer over 972 posts. Still, it's faster than doing it by hand
• One problem showed up here that brown_betty didn't report: for some reason LJ-SEC kept telling me that my password into GreatestJournal was wrong. I just hit "okay" and the upload continued without problem.
• As described, the following were not transfered over: tags, user pictures, moods, or comments.
• Also not transferring over: embedded media ( found by liz_marcs) and LJ Polls (found by justhuman).
• Does not load your memories automatically. That's something you have to do by hand.
• All security settings appear to be maintained, i.e., my few flocked posts remained flocked and my few private posts remained private. (Note: brown_betty in her post notes that filtered and flocked posts may get randomly assigned to new filters. Please be aware of this as you proceed.)
• LJ-cuts were likewise maintained.
• There's some weird editing issues around the "lj-user" names in the post (i.e, they're put on separate lines), but that can be easily remedied if I feel like fixing them.
• Overall experience: Slow, but a hell of a lot better than doing it manually.

Backing Up to JournalFen

• Unfair to compare. I only transfered over 46 posts instead of all 972.
• At first, I couldn't get it recognize the JournalFen site, then I remembered that JournalFen ends in .net and not .com. Once I fixed it, the transfer went ahead with no problem.
• As described, the following were not transfered over: tags, user pictures, moods, or comments.
• Does not load your memories automatically. That's something you have to do by hand.
• Whether or not it preserves security settings is unknown, but given the other problems I wouldn't risk it.
• LJ-cuts were sometimes maintained. In some cases, the LJ cuts transfered with no trouble. In other cases, they're completely gone.
• If you want to talk weird editing...sometimes the text transfered over fine. Sometimes the formatting was messed up, mostly in the form of additional blank spaces in between paragraphs.
• Overall experience: Gah! But still probably better than doing it by hand if not cross-posting in real-time.

Well, I just essentially backed up my LJ to two sites, and can now easily back up all my fanfiction to a third site. YAY!

This program apparently works with any site that uses LJ code. Just substitute "greatestjournal" in brown_betty's instructions for whatever LJ-code site you want to transfer your posts to and you're golden.

You can also pick and choose the posts you want to transfer. You can check next to the post you want to transfer (instead of doing the "check all" as described in brown_betty's instructions), or you can leave the box next to the post unchecked if you don't want it to go. It's a good option if there's a post you don't want chance transferring or are uncomfortable transferring. This also helps if you've cross-posted anything to the other site for back-up and don't want to have to go around deleting a whole host of double-posts.

The only drawback (and it's really, really minor considering the amount of work this program saves you) is that you have to manually tag, memory, and edit some posts (especially if you link between story parts or different posts within your own LJ).

Overall, I say Hooray! It saved me a ton of work. In short, about a year's worth of work was done in a little over an hour.

Once more, let me stress, I'm not planning on leaving LiveJournal (hell, I'm paid until July 2008), but now I've got two solid back-ups in case things here go pear-shaped.

Note: This LJ-SEC is a Windows only program. I don't know if there are any Mac equivalents.

Comments

[brownbetty]

Thanks for writing this up! I'm going to edit a link to this into my post, since it appears people are still using it as a resource.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Thank you for pointing people to the program. I just got around to finally testing it and aside from the items noted above, it worked as advertised.

[justhuman.livejournal.com]

Great resource - *applause for both of you*

Just to add, I copied over to InsaneJournal and ran into problems with polls. I have a free account over there and got the message that my account type didn't support polls. I'm missing about 15 out of 1138 and based on the messages that I received, that's about right.

I'm in the process of update my IJ to a perm account, but I'm not sure if the polls would have gone through or not. Polls on LJ have a unique ID number that probably won't translate to the other service.

When my upgrade comes through, I'll try to select a few of the poll posts and move them over.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh. Thanks for pointing that out.

I run so few polls (something like 3 in four years) that I didn't even notice. I have a perm account there, and no, the polls did not transfer over at all.

[brownbetty]

Ooh, good point. I only did it with GJ, but I didn't get error messages! I had better make a note of that. You're probably right that it wouldn't make a difference if you had a paid account; the poll id would be meaningless to the other system.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Also, embedded media doesn't transfer over to IJ or GJ (which I found out earlier). The reason is because neither one of the sites support embedding yet.

However, I know Squeaky over at IJ says that with the next code update, they'll be supporting embedded media.

I didn't get error messages...

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Regarding the polls on either GJ or IJ, either.

Re: I didn't get error messages...

[brownbetty]

Yeah, mine appear to have uploaded, but the entries contain [Error: poll #964507 not found], unsurprisingly.

Re: I didn't get error messages...

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I got the same thing.

Re: I didn't get error messages...

[brownbetty]

I suppose if you created a poll long enough ago in lj's history that one of the clone's would have a poll with the same ID, that poll might appear in place of yours. Which could be mildly amusing!

PS Edited and credited

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I added a new bullet point to my post indicating that polls don't transfer over. I credited you with the find.

[brownbetty]

Oh, and re: filtered posts, my guess, without having looked at the source code, is that filters are stored by lj with a numerical ID based on the order in which they were created, so have a filter with the same name may not help at all. (I tried creating filters with identical names down to the capitalization; no joy.)

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I fixed it. I just said that flocked and filtered may result in the posts getting assigned to new filters.

[missmurchison.livejournal.com]

Thanks to you and brownbetty for the tip! I'm backed up on insanejournal already.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Just be sure to check your flocked and filtered posts, since they may get randomly assigned to other filters.

Also, polls and embedded media don't transfer over either (per comments above), so you might have some odd gaps in some posts.

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the great link to the step by step! I'm glad I knew to check the flocked and filtered stuff. Stuff that was private, flocked, and public were all fine, but the custom filtered stuff showed up with a "lock" icon, but when I clicked on "edit post" it was listed as public. (I haven't taken enough time to figure out how to create custom filters on GJ.) Thankfully there isn't that much stuff I custom filter, so going through manually was managable, particularly using the ljsec as a compact list.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Another vote of thanks here - and if you see me cluttering up your flist on Greatestjournal today that's why, I woke at 5AM for some reason and go the backup done in the (hopefully quiet) early hours of the morning.

Belatedly occurs to me that it was late evening in the US. Oops...

I will also be linking to this, since I'd imagine that others will want to do this.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Here's another resource: LJ Book (http://www.ljbook.com/) will turn the contents of your LJ, including pictures, comments, and links, into a PDF.

As they note, your password will be requested. As they suggest, change your password before you use it, then change it back afterwards.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

LJ archive does the same, except that it's an electronic copy that is completely searchable and browseable.

LJ-SEC is a program that literally transfers all the contents of your LJ to another LJ-based journaling site.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

WOW. d00d, must you rock the house so hard? Thanks!

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for this. The only problem I've had is that even though the 'backdate' box is checked that on some entries it came up with an error message related to backdating and the entry won't post. Not sure how to get around that.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Just hit okay. It turns out to be a bug.

The post will slot into your archive at the correct date.

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

I tried but it kept failing. I identified the post that it was hanging up on as it listed it in the error message and just edited it to 'backdate'. That appeared to do the trick.

[arby-m.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was crazy easy. Thank you so much for posting this!! I will go thank BB now too.

[asphyxi.livejournal.com]

currently in the middle of backups and transfers. picked greatestjournal due to username availability [*finally* got the one i truly wanted! damn LJ username campers *shakes fist*], utter "FREE"-ness of tools, and overall community.

all this in light of Strikethrough. although i wasn't affected *frantic wood-knocking*, it pays to be careful and backup. heard that journal deletion is still happening and one thing i'll say about that whole snafu is thank god i decided to edit my profile. 0.0

thanks loads to yours and brown_betty's links! :)

[talullahred.livejournal.com]

You're a goddess!

[miraba.livejournal.com]

Uploading to JF went very fast for me, with 781 of 841 posts transferred in 5 minutes. It was unhappy about the other 60, so I'll still have to upload by hand.

The biggest problem with LJ-sec is the lack of comments. I also have a copy backed up with LJarchive, but that isn't helping right now.

[serendu.livejournal.com]

Just want to add my thanks for this - very useful indeed!

[bleedtoblue.livejournal.com]

This and BrownBetty's post were wildly helpful. I had no trouble with the programs at all. I do have a question. I want to back up a second, different journal but I'm not sure how to do that. I don't find an option on LJ-sec that allows me to do that. Do I need to download it a second time?

[elf]

It keeps giving me errors that the backdate option isn't turned on. Not constantly--but about every third or fourth post. ???

Overall, I'm not concerned if I don't get it all transfered. I don't need every meme I've ever done carried over. But it means I'll have to go through & sort out which ones didn't transfer, in case there's anything I consider crucial that's being missed.