Miss Lynx ([info]misslynx) wrote,
@ 2005-01-06 13:52:00
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Journal Backup Options
For those looking to back up their journals just in case of any unpleasantness in the new Terms of Service or afterwards, there are a couple of tools available outside of LJ's built-in options:

There's a service at http://www.ljbook.com that will turn your entire journal, including comments, into a PDF e-book. You can specify individual years if you want, and decide what elements to include/exclude (moods, music, private entries, etc.). it's free but they welcome donations. That's the easiest way to back it up in a readable format.

There's also a downloadable program (Windows only - feh!) at http://fawx.com/ljArchive/ that will archive it as XML the way LJ exports it, but en masse rather than month by month. That approach is best if you want to import it into another blog program of some sort, like WordPress which I mentioned above. Possibly some of the LJ clones out there would allow importing it from that format too, I don't know.

I posted these in a reply to one of the commenters on my last post, but thought I should probably post them separately as well for others who may be interested.


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[info]morgandria
2005-01-06 06:56 pm UTC (link)
The LJ Book link has had its account suspended.

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[info]misslynx
2005-01-06 07:17 pm UTC (link)
Yes, I just saw that when I went back there today to do the next year of mine (I started with 2002 last night and when you're using the free version you can only do one export at a time).

I expect they went way over their bandwidth limits due to the buyout-induced panic. :-( Hopefully the site will be back up eventually.

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[info]pbprincess
2005-01-06 10:05 pm UTC (link)
How seriously are you concerned over the buyout?

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[info]misslynx
2005-01-06 10:32 pm UTC (link)
I guess the best answer would be "moderately worried, but not panicking".

I don't think Six Apart are going to pull a Yahoo and try to claim rights to everyone's content - after all, they already produce one of the top blogging programs out there and run one hosted blog site already, and haven't done anything like that there to the best of my knowledge. So I doubt there's going to be anything terrible in the new ToS, though I certainly do intend to read them thoroughly before agreeing, just on principle.

What I'm more concerned about is a gradual deterioriation and commercialization over time, as the new owners begin to settle in and start looking at the financials and wanting to find ways to make it more profitable. Right now, the majority of what LJ does (providing free journals and communities) brings in no revenue whatsoever, and consumes resources without providing any benefit to the company. I can't see any normal company with the usual concern for the bottom line allowing that to continue indefinitely. They're going to want to find a way to make it pay for itself. That's perfectly understandable from a business perspective, but it's likely to impact negatively on user experience.

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[info]pbprincess
2005-01-07 12:38 am UTC (link)
That's basically what I'd felt about the move, though I also have a sentimental idea that Brad wouldn't have let go of control of LJ without making sure that it would be okay.
For that reason I haven't been rushing to back up my lj...but it worries me that so many other people have been.

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[info]cavum_oris
2005-01-07 03:49 am UTC (link)
one could hope that instead of making unpaid accounts all commercial and shitty, they might consider adding more perks to paid accounts, and generally promoting them more, so that people will want to chip in. making money by offering a better product, what a concept! I mean, i know its work running this place, and making it work better and all, but, how much work/money is really going into keeping my free acct running? some bandwidth? maintenance that youd have to do whether i was here or not? not much else has changed since i got it, other than some minor interface stuff.

obviously, if they are profit-driven, it doesnt make sense to have free accts that arent at least advertising, nor to open-source -- why give it out when you can make people pay? but if the company has not, as you say, done any of that money-grabbing stuff with their other software, then i dont see any reason to be overly concerned. im sure some things will change, and some of it we may not like, but maybe a lot of it we will. nobody will be 100% pleased, and they will blame it on the buyout, but theres no reason to think that all change is bad, or that changes i dont like "would never have happened if they hadnt sold!"....

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