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1. 

   Do you know what kind of database 20six blogs are based on? Are they MySQL or compatible with it?

   Too late for me, as my old 20six blog is long gone, but I can’t help wondering whether it’s possible to import a 20six blog into, say, wordpress.

   Comment by Snag (aka frunt, aka Ant) — 20 January 2006 #

2. 

   Bubb, I used version 1, and it backed up 1500 posts, and hundereds of images, worked excellent, also downloaded all the posts I have made as guest author of other blogs, great piece of kit.

   Is the output of version 2 any different?

   Pete

   Comment by amillionpieces — 20 January 2006 #

3. 

   Snags my new blog will be wordpress based (as is this one of Bubbs) and so far we’ve exported all my old stuff from 20Six and I’m awaiting a bit of code from the Bubbmeister to dump it into Wordpress.

   Comment by bobble — 20 January 2006 #

4. 

   I’m such a geek I could tell bubb’s blog was WP just from the look of the link in his comment on your blog.

   Argh, the shame!

   Comment by Snag (aka frunt, aka Ant) — 20 January 2006 #

5. 

   amillinopieces: The output format is the same as before. Basically I just improved the user interface (made it not look like it had crashed if it took a long time) and thought I’d bundle the source up this time.

   Snag: As bobble says, the ‘blog upload’ code is probably going to be written this weekend and tested on our Wordpress blogs.

   As for the 20six database – I’ve no idea and happily I don’t need to know, as I’m using the nice metaWeblog API to get 20six to give me all the posts, then using normal web page grabbing to download the comments and images.

   The blog re-uploader will *also* use the metaWeblog API to post blogs and also upload images (I hope) to a new blog. It should work with any blogging service that has implementes metaWeblog API – which is nearly all of them.

   The only outstanding ones which are different are (I think) LiveJournal and MoveableType, which have their own slightly different APIs. However if I can set up a test account on them, I’ll probably get the upload working for that too. It won’t be very different from the others.

   I have a grand scheme to put this all into a single “move blog posts around” tool at some point, but it’s early days yet. Saving the 20sixers was my top priority.

   Comment by bubb — 20 January 2006 #

6. 

   If only you’d written this when I was leaving. Either that, or if I’d stuck around at 20six longer…

   Comment by Snag (aka frunt, aka Ant) — 20 January 2006 #

7. 

   Forgive my technological ignorance, but once I have downloaded Blog Back Up for windows…what do I have to do? . It sounds like a very stupid question, doesn´t it?

   Comment by MJ — 20 January 2006 #

8. 

   MJ, It’s a perfectly good question.

   Find the BlogBackupWindows.zip file and extract it (right-click and choose “Extract All…”) then hit Next a three times.

   You should then see BlogBackup.exe in the extracted files. Double click on that to run it.

   If you get an error right away, you probably need the .NET Framework v2 – see the download link in the post above.

   Hopefully you should see a new window asking you for your 20six username and password. Actually I just noticed that windows starts off kind of small, I must fix that. Move the mouse over to the lower right edge of the window, then click and drag it out to be bigger.

   Now, click on the white box to the right of “20six username” and enter your 20 six username. Do the same thing for the 20six password (note the password will be displayed as ****)

   Then click on the button called “…” which is to the right of the “Folder to copy blog to:” text. This will pop up a Folder chooser for you to choose where to save your blog to. Pick a folder or make a new one and click OK.

   At this point the button labelled “Back up the Blog!” should be enabled (not grey but click-able). Click on this, sit back and wait – it will print up lots of messages like “Downloading posts…” and “Archiving post X”.

   When it is finised you will see the words “FINISHED!” in the progress report.

   If you look at the folder you chose earlier, you should see some Archive-BLOGNAME-YEAR.xml files, where BLOGNAME is the name of your blog and YEAR is replaced with 2004, 2005, 2006 etc. These are your blog entries and comments stored as RSS 2.0 format blog feeds. This is a standard format for blogs and I’ll write another program to make use of them at a later date. For now you can look at them in a text editor or Word or even Internet Explorer. There should also be an Images folder with all your blog’s images in it.

   Hope that answers the question but do ask if anything else isn’t clear.

   Comment by bubb — 20 January 2006 #

9. 

   You are lovely y’know and have a massive noggin. Ooer.

   Comment by bobble — 20 January 2006 #

10. 

    Well mine is trundling off and archiving away – thanks!
    Just one leetle question – I see that the 20Six image URL’s remain in the posts – presumably, I could upload my backed up images onto some free webspace, and do a mass find/replace in the XML files to change the paths before uploading the entries to the ‘new blog of my choice’…?
    Does that sound feasible?

    Comment by Kevling — 20 January 2006 #

11. 

    Thanks! I´ll try =)

    Comment by MJ — 20 January 2006 #

12. 

    kevling – that’s odd; it is supposed to replace the 20six image urls with the relative paths of the downloaded images. I’ll have to check that it is working correctly!

    You’re right, you can certainly do a mass find & replace in word or anything – as XML is just text, it is very easy to look at and fix up. That’s why it’s quite handy

    Certainly any blog uploader tool would have to ask you where to upload your images and redirect the image links to them

    Comment by bubb — 21 January 2006 #

13. 

    I keep getting the message ‘wrong username or password?’ – I’ve tried retyping the password in case my fingers had been typing faster than my brain, but no luck – what have I done/not done?

    Comment by floatykatja — 22 January 2006 #

14. 

    Floaty, that’s exactly the same problem I’ve just had.
    I’ll sit here with you until someone in the know comes along. Wanna biscuit?

    Comment by solis — 22 January 2006 #

15. 

    Ah – Floaty, I’m an idiot but I got there eventually.
    I think you just need to type in your user name, NOT the whole 20six URL – as it is *already* 20six blog specific… I’m such a ninny.
    It seems to be working for me now, is that what you were doing?

    Comment by solis — 22 January 2006 #

16. 

    No, I was just typing in my username *wail*! Can I have a biscuit anyway, please?

    Comment by floatykatja — 22 January 2006 #

17. 

    yep you should be typing in the same username and password as you do when logging in to 20six. So that isn’t the whole 20six URL. As you say, it already knows to work with 20six.

    I would open up the 20six login page and check that you are using the right password. If it *still* doesn’t work, then I’m very confused

    Comment by bubb — 22 January 2006 #

18. 

    *cries*
    I tried wiping the original download and starting again from scratch, but still the same error message. Then I tried using v2 but my security system didn’t like that one little bit. I think I should maybe put myself (and my computer!) into HJB’s little ‘too stupid to be allowed internet access’ box!

    Comment by floatykatja — 22 January 2006 #

19. 

    Kate – *oh no*!! email me your username & password and I’ll sort it out myself. I can use the original PHP script version as I’m at home at the mo. I can email you back the archived up blog afterwards. If you want, change your password temporarily and then just give me the temporary password, then change it back when I’m done. (so you don’t tell me what the normal password is, that should be a secret after all).

    email it to mark_lt_baker@yahoo.it

    Comment by bubb — 22 January 2006 #

20. 

    Bless you – you are an absolute darling. Emailing it across now…

    Comment by floatykatja — 22 January 2006 #

21. 

    Mark, this program’s a piece of genius, fella – and so are you for coding it and uploading it for our benefit. Nice one!

    Much appreciated, and I’ll be buying you a drink or several next time I see you (which I hope won’t be too long!).

    Thanks again; I’m currently in the process of downloading and backing up my blog from 20six, the first step in what I hope will be a seamless move to wordpress sometime in the not too distant future.

    Comment by black Rat — 22 January 2006 #

22. 

    Blog’s just finished backing up, but I’ve only got two images in the folder – .xml files for each year are there, containing all text and comments (and links are in there to the countless images), but the images folder contains just two. Everything as it should be there?

    Comment by black Rat — 22 January 2006 #

23. 

    ratty: hmm, that’s not quite right. Did you get any errors? It should try to download images *wherever* they are. It should also be printing out Image names in the Progress Report window as well.

    I can see I might have to do a version 1.1 which dumps out a diagnostic log so I can work out what’s going wrong when it doesn’t quite work! I should be able to do that tomorrow, then hopefully we can get to the bottom of the errors some people are having.

    wordpress seems to be pretty good. It does have some RSS importing built in, but I’ve been playing with it and it doesn’t seem to work very well. I have a partial fix for that, but I’ll still write my own utility to upload the images I think.

    Comment by bubb — 22 January 2006 #

24. 

    hrm. Most of your images seem to be at http://www.zen41678.zen.co.uk/xxxxx.jpg – I can’t think why that would be a problem off the top of my head. But it’s a start when looking at it tomorrow!

    Comment by bubb — 22 January 2006 #

25. 

    Thank you so much for this – I’ve just backed up my bits now – I’ve been wanting this functionality for ages, but I’m not very good with programming, so never actually got around to trying to scrape the site!

    Keith (Brackets inclusive)

    Comment by Keith — 22 January 2006 #

26. 

    Bubb: Had trouble initially with a few images that I’d posted at the beginning of my blog (principaly, those which for some reason no longer display and are hosted by 20six). It said it couldn’t grab them, or something, but no idea about the others.

    Am I right in assuming that it’s academic? Provided the links to the images are intact, wherever the backup is imported to, they should still display, right?

    For what it’s worth, I have copies on my local drive of all the images that I have on my blog, so I’ve no specific need to have them physically backed up by the code. They’re hosted in three places; on 20six initially. Then when I used up all that web space, on my own web space with Pipex. When I eventually used all that up, I began hosting them on webspace with Zen (the address you’ve picked up above). When I move to wordpress, it would seem aposite to finally transfer all the images to the same place and do a find and replace to that effect, but in the meantime, I assume as the code backs up all the links within the .xml files, they’ll still display whenever it’s imported?

    Comment by black Rat — 23 January 2006 #

27. 

    ok folks, I’ve just made a NEW version of the downloader. I fixed a couple of bugs with image downloading – my bad! I would recommend that anyone who had previously downloaded their blog to do so again.

    floatykatja, you will be ok as I downloaded yours using a different tool and that should all be ok.

    BlackRat, yes as long as the original images stay on the web, it doesn’t matter where you link to them from. They will display. However the blog downloader does attempt to download any image link it finds, for convenience. If you don’t want that and are happy with the original image links being left, you can just uncheck the “donwload images” box.

    An update on wordpress uploading: I have it working without images using a modification of wordpress 2.0 but I still think an external tool is going to be more helpful. So I’ll try to get that going asap!

    Actually I might be able to write a little wordpress importer that grabs directly from 20six to wordpress. Hrm…. I’ll have to look into that.

    Comment by bubb — 23 January 2006 #

28. 

    Bubb: I’ve emailed you the lastest output file with an .xml of the 2004 archive. Latest backup grabbed a few of the offending images (i.e., some of those hosted on 20six which aren’t displaying), but that was all; it’s scooped up 12 images, but the other several hundred are all out there awaiting collection.

    Comment by black Rat — 23 January 2006 #

29. 

    Thank you Bubb!
    And what a lucky lady Bobble is to have such a clever fella

    Comment by solis — 23 January 2006 #

30. 

    Cheers Ratty! I’ll look at that tomorrow when I have a PC in front of me.

    I’m working on a direct importer from 20six into wordpress. Fingers crossed

    Comment by bubb — 23 January 2006 #

31. 

    Ok folks, new version added – with thanks to BlackRat for the help!
    It should be a bit more agressive about finding images to download. It will download images in comments too.

    Other than that, no changes, so only re-download your blog if you were missing images before.

    By the way I’m only on a half day at work today so fingers crossed, I’ll get plenty of the Wordpress importer done today. Made a promising start on it last night!

    Comment by bubb — 24 January 2006 #

32. 

    Neat! I will definitely be giving this a try!

    Comment by eruditebaboon — 25 January 2006 #

33. [...] Alternatively there is a Windows version available as well. The features are nearly the same, but vary as I’m either improving the PHP version (at home on a Mac) or the Windows version (at work on a PC) so they are often out of sync! [...]

    Pingback by technobubble.info » 20six Archive PHP script — 28 January 2006 #

34. [...] It is based on the RSS importer that ships with Wordpress 2.0, but it has been changed to work with my 20six backup script and windows tool. These download comments as well as simply posts, and use html ‘div’ tags to indicate where each comment is, whilst keeping the same format as 20six comments (including ’sweeties awarded’). [...]

    Pingback by technobubble.info » Rss Archive Importer for Wordpress — 28 January 2006 #

35. 

    Ok folks the Rss Archive Importer for Wordpress 2.0 is up!

    It is working for bobble and myself, although not perfect, I think it should be ready for people to use now.

    Note that you might want to wait a couple of days until I improve the archive tool to format comments correctly, so that they can be imported as ‘proper’ wordpress comments. If I were you I would set up a test Wordpress site (perhaps on your own PC rather than on a public website) and give it a try first, as it’s currently VERY difficult to remove many Wordpress posts at a time. Sadly!

    Comment by bubb — 28 January 2006 #

36. [...] http://technobubble.info/2006/01/20/20six-blog-archiver-for-windows-version-1/Version 1.4 under link. [...]

    Pingback by bobble » Blog Archive » New Code — 28 January 2006 #

37. 

    Just to say a massive thanks for this superb program, which is merrily whizzing thru my something like 2000 entries. I take my hat, my necktie, my jacket and my boots off to you. I’ll leave it at that.

    Comment by menace & KE — 31 January 2006 #

38. 

    Bubb, you are a tech genius, I am a tech numptie. I am getting as far as electing a folder to download to and it’s saying ‘Application attempted to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy. To grant this application the required permission contact system administrator , or use the Microsoft .NET Framework Configuration tool.
    I’ve tried ignoring ,re-opening the Blog Backup tool etc.
    Any ideas appreciated, apologies for the hole in the head.
    BTW, if I get as far as downloading Blog, it says its performed an illegal op and has to close. grrr.

    Comment by Steve — 31 January 2006 #

39. 

    Word up, Bubb. Your program is fucking sweet.
    It did throw up one of those program closing, send error report dialogues for a couple of my blogs; but for the best part, it worked like an absolute charm. Go you.
    xx

    Comment by squished — 9 February 2006 #

40. 

    Squished: It crashed eh? Naughty thing, it’s not supposed to do that! Grr. Oh well, glad it worked anyway.

    Steve: I’ve just realised that the .NET Framework Configuration tool is in the Administration Tools bit of the Windows Control Panel. Still not quite sure what the problem is though

    Comment by bubb — 9 February 2006 #

41. 

    Hi Bubb,
    Great program. I’m having some trouble though. The new wordpress blog doesn’t seem to recognize my old titles and comments. The comments are just listed on the main page, not under the comments link. Is this right or did I screw up.

    Comment by Tom — 26 March 2006 #

42. 

    Hey Bubb,

    Thanks for this, it seems to work pretty well, up to a point.

    I’ve run it twice, and it’s crashed at exactly the same point – the ‘Microsoft error report’ it generates contains the following if it helps:-
    EventType : clr20r3 P1 : blogbackup.exe P2 : 1.0.0.0 P3 : 43de0f1b
    P4 : blogbackup P5 : 1.0.0.0 P6 : 43de0f1b P7 : 1a P8 : 0
    P9 : system.indexoutofrangeexception

    On a side issue, once I can get it to perform a full backup, we’ve got a new blog community thing set up at platform27.co.uk, there’s about 120 ex-20sixers there so far, so it would be really useful if there was a way to import your backup files into it…

    Their help pages state they do have an ‘import blog’ facility… The problem is that they only accept Moveable Type or Typepad import files…

    Are the XML files your program outputs easily convertable? (I know nothing about all these different blog systems I’m afraid)

    If not, can Wordpress output something in the right format? If so, then I guess I could set up a Wordpress blog, upload my 20Six stuff to it using your upload tool, then save it all from Wordpress in MT format so I can THEN import them to Platform27…?

    (phew)

    Comment by Kevling — 31 May 2006 #

43. 

    PS I must say the ending of Claybourne left me slightly confused!

    Comment by Kevling — 31 May 2006 #

44. 

    Hi Kevling,

    I’ll email about tracking down the problem. Things might have changed on 20six that are confusing the archiver! Or it could simply be a rubbishy bug on my part of course

    XML files in general are easily convertable between different formats. The key thing is knowing what format platform27.co.uk is expecting to get! The format of the archive is a ’standard’ RSS feed so hopefully it will ‘just work’ to a certain extent.

    Perhaps I should set up a test account on Platform27 to sort it out…

    PS I haven’t heard the ending of Claybourne yet – my iPod mini died and I’ve only just got it working again by putting a 1GB CF Card in it. So I’ll sync up tonight and listen to it on the train tomorrow… No Spoilerz!!!

    Comment by bubb — 1 June 2006 #

45. 

    Hi there,
    I tried using this, unzipped it and downloaded the Windows .Net too but everytime I try to run it, windows shut it down saying there has been a problem. I have restarted but nothing’s changed, does my computer has a vvv…irus?

    Comment by OliviaJoules — 1 June 2006 #

46. 

    Wait, you put a CF card into an iPod mini? You really are FAR too clever at this sort of stuff.

    And speaking of clever, thanks immensely for fixing the bug in 1.5 – you really are a star Bubb!

    Comment by Kevling — 2 June 2006 #

47. 

    Yep, the hard disk in an iPod Mini is actually a Compact Flash 4Gb ‘microdrive’ and you can stick any Compact Flash devices onto it. I was considering ordering up a 4Gb flash card but I’m trying to save cash, hence I just used a 1Gb card we had spare.

    Am just uploading the source code for version 1.6 now…

    Olivia: It’s possible that its a virus but more likely that there is a bug in the Archiver. Try the latest version, it has a new bug fix. Does it create a log file at all?

    Comment by bubb — 2 June 2006 #

48. 

    Hey, I just used the version 1.6 and it worked! Woo! It did create a log file which it sent to windows but I don’t think that would be of any help. Thanks so much for this again! Damn, I miss the 20-six sweeties, how crap does the whole new 20-six look?

    Comment by Olivia — 4 June 2006 #

49. 

    Hey, does this software work with the new platform? I just tried it, but it looks like nothing’s happening.

    Comment by Boso — 30 June 2006 #

50. 

    Hey, does this software work with the new platform? I just tried it, but it looks like nothing’s happening.

    Comment by Boso — 30 June 2006 #

51. 

    Hrm, it might not work with the new platform, they’ve probably changed things and I don’t have a 20six account any more to develop it further, sorry

    Comment by bubb — 30 June 2006 #

52. 

    Hi

    Thanks for this! I managed a full back up of my 20six blog before it crashed and burned. My brother idlebones and sis helsbels are also refugees. I’ve been tinkering with wordpress and am looking for a good host for my blog. What’s a good solution that would host three blogs each with a separate domain and not an enormous amount of traffic – i.e. mostly family and friends. Hi to Belgian Waffle too as it was seeing her name here that got me thinking of a 20six exit strategy!

    Adam

    Comment by Adam Ball — 7 July 2006 #

53. 

    My, bobble’s & some other blogs are all hosted from a single http://www.bluehost.com/ account.

    They seem to have a reasonable control panel for setting up wordpress and support all the various server-side stuff one could want.

    You can quite happily have different domains or sub-domains on the account.

    They didn’t seem to expensive when we looked around for a wordpress-friendly host – no idea how they compare to others any more though.

    Comment by bubb — 7 July 2006 #

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