How to Use Evernote to Back Up Your Blog Posts

You never think about backing up your blog until something happens that has you in a tizzy. For me, that something was that I accidentally deleted a fun book activity my daughter and I did using the book, Don't Squish the Sasquatch. It was awesome.

And now, it's gone.

Forever. 

That was a time in my blogging journey in which I didn't send an email of the blog to myself or make back ups of any kind. In fact, the disappearance of Sasquatch is why I came up with a content management system in the first place.

Click on "Read More" to see how you can easily back up your blog posts to an online repository with a simple email.


I think every blogger I know has worked out a process they follow for creating a post, and mine is pretty simple. For any post I create for Ruffles and Rain Boots, my process looks like this:

1. Each post gets a folder on my computer where I store the post's pictures, templates I've created, and notes taken during the creation process. Everything for a post, including reference links and cross-promotion ideas, goes into that file so that it is all in one spot. 
2. After I write and edit the post, select and edit the pictures, and add in all necessary properties and tags, it's ready for publication. It seems so simple when I type it out, but this step alone can take me days for a single post!  
3. I copy the HTML into an email send it to Evernote. 
4. I schedule or publish the post and add it to my content management system. 
5. Post promotion begins with visits to link parties, as well as updates to and discussions on social media.

After I lost the Sasquatch post, I started making copies of every post and saving the WYSIWYG version into Microsoft Word and the HTML version into a Notepad file. You don't have to tell me: it was overkill. It was also a lot of work and I knew I couldn't sustain it. Now, I do half as much work and get even more benefits! 

How? Step 3 above, copying the HTML for the post into an email, provides me peace of mind that should Blog-ageddon occur, I will be able to recover quickly. Here's how you can do it as well. 

Set Up Evernote 

Sign up for Evernote, if you aren't a subscriber already. It is a free service. There are space limitations by month however, I have not encountered an error with them, and I back up all of my posts, except link party posts or Twitter recaps. If you want, check out Ruffles and Rain Boots and you will see that I use high-quality images and graphics, have about 1,000 words per post, and even I don't run into the limit. If you run into storage limits, you can opt for a premium subscription for either a monthly or a yearly rate. 

I don't get a kick back from Evernote for promoting it and obviously, it isn't the only option out there. I know a good number of people who use my process but send their emails to Microsoft's One Note, for instance. After you research the option and decide on the best tool for you, the steps are pretty much the same. One caveat: MS One Note needs approved email addresses before you can send notes to it. Follow the instructions for it here and then continue. 

Locate Evernote email address 

When you sign up, Evernote will assign you a specific email address that allows you to email notes directly into your folders. You can find it by clicking on the drop down arrow to the right of your username at the very right of the Evernote header.

Once you're on the main page, scroll down to the section entitled, "Email Notes To" and copy the entire email address.

Create Evernote Contact In Email  

The Evernote address from Step 2 is what allows the magic to happen, so you want to add it to your email address book. My contact is named - can you guess? - "Evernote." Not too creative, but I won't forget it.  

Set Up a Back Up Notebook In Evernote

Set up a Posts Back Up notebook in Evernote. Follow the process to create a new notebook in Evernote (at the left of the page, select the drop down menu to the right of the "Notebooks" section). I titled mine, "Posts Back Up" so that I could remember it easily, but feel free to get creative here. :)

Tag Creation (Optional)

If you would like a filtering function by topic, go ahead and create some tags. If you do so, you can add a tag in the email subject line and it will automatically add it to the note. You can only add a tag to a note (via email) if it is an existing tag. I learned this the hard way -- add some tags NOW and then automatically tag them when you email them for back up. 

Now that you're all set up, it takes less than a minute to back up a post! For definition and clarity purposes, please note that HTML refers to the code and WYSIWYG is from the 'Compose' tab. As a reminder, WYSIWYG means "what you see is what you get." 

After you've decided your post is worthy of the "Publish" button's charms, go ahead and switch from the WYSIWYG to the HTML view by clicking on the HTML view tab. In Blogger, it looks like this: 

Once you click on it, the HTML code will appear, and if you're not too comfy working with code, don't panic. You only have to copy it and then switch it back. 

Note: You can copy the WYSIWYG post, but you will have to reformat everything if you need to repost. I don't believe in duplicating work, so I copy the HTML code. 

Be aware that when you switch back to the Compose tab or close out the post, Blogger will notify you that you haven't saved anything - it always does this in the HTML view; there is nothing to be concerned with.

Step 1: Copy HTML

To copy everything, put your cursor inside the compose box (the bit with the code in it) and complete a 'select all' command for your computer (CTRL+A or the like). Then copy it.

Step 2: Email it to Evernote

In a new email, paste the code you copied into the body section of the email.

In the recipient (or To:) field, type in Evernote (or your contact name for your Evernote email address).

In the subject line, enter the following: 

• your post title
• @Your Evernote notebook name for your posts you created in the section above
• #tag (if you'd like to be able to filter based on tags, see the Tags Section above as they need to be set up before you email)

In my example below, my post's title is, "Princess Anna Dress." My Evernote notebook name is "Posts Back Up." I then added tags that align with categories for my blog (FROZEN and sewing, in this case).  

One you have it the way you want, hit send on your email. You can go and check Evernote now for your note. Go ahead, I'll wait right here.

See, I told you'd it would be there! Mine is below. The Princess Anna Dress is filed under the Posts Back Up notebook with the FROZEN and Sewing tags.

Evernote has a great deal of features for you to explore, but if you've followed the steps above, your post is backed up and stored safely within Evernote. Additionally, you will have a copy of the email in your 'Sent' folder, if you're looking for even more assurance that your post will not be lost. 

If you follow this process and happen to lose any post, you need to create a new post, paste in the HTML code from your note, and then publish it again. If you only copied the WYSIWYG, you will have to reformat.  

A free, online broken link tool will allow you to quickly find the gaps that the missing post left on the Internet. You will have to rectify each broken link. For those of you who do not already check for broken links, I use this free broken link checker tool. I only check once every few months, but I know of bloggers who check monthly. 

Because I follow these steps, I have peace of mind that I have my posts backed up and easily accessible. This is just part of my content management process, and I'll be sharing more soon about that. 

I hope this helped you to think about your content management and if it did, I'd be ever so grateful if you shared it via Twitter, Pinterest, email, snail mail... You get the idea. 

Learn how to back up blog posts in less than a minute! #blogging #blogtips

Thank you for stopping by and if you have any questions, please leave me a comment or email me at Sarah {at} Ruffles and Rain Boots {dot} com.