Michael Arrington from TechCrunch posted a review of BackupMyBlog, a new service that backs up blogs on a daily basis. He said something that really piqued my interest at the end of his review. He suggested FeedBurner ought to be offering this sort of service. Now that’s an idea!
Incidentally, I posted the latest podcasting figures from FeedBurner yesterday, and in that post, I compared the feed security one gets from using their service with locking up important documents in a thick safe. Now I realize I was thinking pretty much the same thing, except I couldn’t put my finger on it. Yes, I couldn’t agree more. That would be a true value-added service from FeedBurner. It’d be a one-stop shop for one’s feed needs. It makes sense. The only question that remains is whether or not FeedBurner should offer a podcasting backup service as well.
➡ Updated 2/17/08: I ended up not using BackupMyBlog, and FeedBurner never introduced a backup service. The thing is, backing up websites and blogs is pretty easy once you know how to do it. The people who want to back them up have a vested interest in doing so and already have ways to do it. The ones that aren’t already backing them up are the ones using free services to host their sites, and those people aren’t very likely to pay for a backup service. That makes the whole incentive to develop such a service diminish to zero.
Discover more from Raoul Pop
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Raoul Pop 
Not necessarily. I’ve never relied on the backups from web hosting companies. One never knows how often they back up, and besides, if I wanted to switch, I don’t think I could ask them to provide me with a CD containing all my data, in an easy to restore format I could use with another web hosting provider. The idea is to have data portability, in a format that a non-programmer could understand. Let’s say you have a desktop app that does backup, and it will ask the end user to provide a few bits of data: the login info for the blog, and the FTP info for the site. Using that data, it will then download the files, and the database, and store them in a single ZIP or CAB or other archive file on the user’s computer. Suppose this app could be scheduled to do regular backups this way. Further suppose the user could choose to restore the blog from archive, either to its current web host or to a new web host, with a single click (and some new bits of data if needed). That functionality would be really, really cool, and I think it would entice a lot of people. I think we’ve all seen by now that people like to have their own data in their own hands. That’s why network computers (once touted by Oracle) never took off. People like to have their own hardware that does stuff on its own. It’s the same with data/content. It’s nice to also have it stored remotely, but when the user can see it sitting in a folder on their drive, and they know they can use it if needed, it makes them feel good.
LikeLike
Wouldn’t this be then the functionality of the site backup function, presumably provided by a hosting service?
LikeLike
Yes, I would. That would be a pretty cool idea. But it would have to surpass (in quality and ease of use) the existing WordPress Backup functionality. I see that you use WP on your site, so you know what I mean. It’s currently very easy for me to email the database backup to myself, and run a synchronization with Dreamweaver to get any modified files. If there were an all-in-one app that would do these two steps with one click, so even a non-programmer could easily use it, that would be totaly cool!
LikeLike
Let’s imagine there is a desktop utility that allows you to backup your blog to a local computer (and restore it in a case). Would you use it?
LikeLike