As TypePad is also your hosting service, it is also their job to make backups of your data in case anything happens to their servers, but you should always have your own backup copy JUST IN CASE.

Make a habit of doing a regular backup - at the very least, once a week. The best habit is to create a backup after you have added a new blog post or page. Back ups are part of your blog insurance.

If you do any big changes to your blog, it’s a good idea to create a backup first.

You can also use your back up to export your TypePad blog to another service (the instructions will depend on which service, you’re exporting to).

TypePad Backups

It’s important to note that TypePad only backs up the text of your blog posts so it doesn’t back up posts and it doesn’t back up images - so make sure you keep a copy of any images you upload to your blog and any pages.

To make a back up, click on the Import/Export link in the Manage tab.

Then in the Export section there will be a link that says “Export: [Your Blog's Name]“. Right click (in Mac, hold down the Control key and click) and choose “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” (this may be slightly different depending on your browser) to save a copy of your blog to your hard drive.

This should be a .txt file. Keep this file safe as it is your backup!

Restoring a backup (or importing another blog)

The process of restoring a backup is actually the same as if you were to import another blog.
TypePad will accept the backup files of other TypePad, Movable Type and WordPress blogs. They will either be .txt files, but sometimes they might be .xml files.
Go to the Import section.

If you’re importing from another blog, you may have a Web address (URL) in which case, use that option.
But in most cases, you’ll be uploading a backup from your hard drive. So hit “Browse” to locate that file. If it’s a TypePad backup, it will be .txt file like post.txt. If it’s from another blog then it may be a different file format like .xml. Select it in your browser window that pops up.
Hit “Import” to import all the posts.

You will then be automatically taken to the list of all your blog posts.
In the example, we restored a backup of our existing posts without first deleting our existing posts so we ended up having duplicates of all our posts. TypePad does not remove duplicate posts when you restore a backup so this is something to remember as you may need to search for duplicated posts and remove them.

Once you’ve restored your blog and removed any unwanted duplicated posts, you will need to republish your blog in order to make your changes public on your blog.

Next up, we’ll go through how to search and replace in TypePad.

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This is part of our super series on How to Blog. Subscribe to our Newsletter for some special surprise How to Blog stuff over the course of the lessons.