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| Image source. |
When I began experimenting with WordPress blogs in 2012, I had been using Blogger since 2005. I found the WordPress user interface to be annoying, so I've done far more blogging by means of the Blogger platform.
In the old days, it was possible to archive Blogger blog content using a Google-generated XML file. Those Blogger "backup files" could be easily imported into WordPress (see the Exodemic blog for an example where I moved blog posts from Blogger to WordPress). In 2013, the contents of the wikifiction blog fit into 3.6 MB XML file. By 2016, the wikifiction archive file had grown to 13.7 MB.
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| Google is creating a copy... |
During 2025, Google changed the way that Blogger blogs are saved and archived as a set of files (see this description). I used the new Google Takeout method and ended up downloading over 20 GB of files for all of my Blogger blogs.
As shown in the image to the left, Google apparently has no way of providing users like me with a quick estimate of how long it will take to prepare Blogger data files for download. I was told that the process could take "hours or days" to complete.
In my case it took about 4 hours for Google's Takeout to prepare by Blogger backup files for download. The next question was how quickly Google would send the archive files to my computer as a download.
My internet service provider can me with download speeds over 100 Mbps but it still took about half an hour to download the 20 GB of zipped files for my blogs.
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| 64,998 files |
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| Four folders for the exported files. |
Google provides options for the size of the zipped files that Takeout generates. I asked for 10 GB files and I got two of them.
One of the most confusing aspects of using Takeout for archiving Blogger content is that Google treats images and videos differently. Blogger has a "mediamanager" that deals separately with the images and videos from blogs.
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| Blogger's "mediamanager". Sample videos. |
Under "Albums", there is usually one image album for each blog (such as Trysta and Ekcolir), but through the years, I ended up accumulating six different albums for the wikifiction blog (see the image below).
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| Some of my Blogger image albums. There are six different albums for the wikifiction blog. |
Musical Albums. For many years, Blogger stored images as Picasa albums and some of those albums were available for viewing through Google Photos. A couple of years ago, those old Picasa albums were taken out of Google Photos, but they are accessible now through Blogger's "mediamanager".
The old XML files for archives of a Blogger blog made use of urls to the image files such as https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8bCGSMwfMTA/V97gHx5pp0I/AAAAAAAAbH4/Koubm66S4jcSvGhuUPmD0D17Ek0xrRHoACLcB/s1600/c_telastid.png. Those urls are still functional,
Next: Chapter 7 of "191988".
