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

[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.