Tag: blog archiving

He’d be so tickled to know he’d become the Patron Maia of Filing Systems… 

*clears throat*

CAVEAT: THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE MOST MANUAL, LABORIOUSLY HAND-PICKED WAY OF ARCHIVING. THERE MAY BE A BETTER WAY, THERE MAY BE SOME ONLINE ARCHIVING SERVICES YOU CAN USE, BUT I’M NOT FAMILIAR WITH THAT. THIS IS JUST HOW I DO THINGS, BECAUSE I LIKE TO KEEP MY OWN RECORDS. 

With that said: 

• HOW DO I START:

–If you have any tags for long threads or replies, head there first and pick out the most memorable or lengthy threads. Only you can do this. Only you know what your favorite parts of your blog are, and what you want to keep. I cannot help you in this, you must go alone. 

–If you don’t have tags, start by going into your Archive and getting the lay of the land. Even if there isn’t a button on your theme for “archive”, every tumblr blog has one; you can get to it by adding /archive after your url. 

–At the top, where it says “Filter by post type”, select for “Text Post”, or “Ask Post”. Start by just looking at the last month’s worth of text posts and pick out the ones that look longer or most relevant. Open each post that looks promising in a new tab, and come back to it later. 

–You may be tempted to open EVERY post. This urge will pass. If/When your browser tabs no longer have recognizable first letters on them, you will start to become more discerning about what posts you save. Trust me. 

• FINDING STUFF: 

–Make friends with the Search function. Tumblr lets you search for keywords as well as tags! Typing in people’s usernames is sometimes the only way to find the stuff you’re looking for, if you haven’t been using tags. 

– Everything is going to be in reverse chronological order on your blog, and the notes only link to the last known reblog. Finding all the replies and asks that went into a particular conversation or RP is going to a pain in the ass. This is why tagging your threads is important!

–When you come across a long thread with a bunch of replies, the hard part is going to be finding the *beginning* of the thread, so hunt that down before you start copy/pasting. 

–You will sometimes have to traverse your treasured mutuals’ blogs in order to find replies. You will begin to have Judgements about other people’s tagging habits and choices of blog theme. Try to remain friends. Take a deep breath. You too have sinned. Cast not the first stone. 

• SPEAKING OF COPY/PASTE:

–Tumblr formatting is a known bitch

–You can’t just Select All and C/P into a document and have it come out like it is on the website. You have to select the usernames and the posts separately in a lot of cases, and c/p each reply in order while adding your own page breaks. 

–Develop a shorthand for this, or keep the usernames on hand so you can quickly c/p them onto new replies, or just add breaks between each reply and then title the whole document “Me_TreasuredMutual01_TheSmutHappens.rtf” or whatever and assume that Future-You will be able to figure out who’s talking by inference. 

–If you’ve got reaction gifs/pictures interspersed with your text, you usually have to add those separately, it depends what word processor you’re using.

–You’re probably going to have to deal with a lot of weird web formatting stuff showing up in your word documents. There are ways to deal with this if you want to clean up your text files, but if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on this, just… let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be; whisper words of wisdom, let it beeeeeee… 

–YOU CAN ALSO *SCREENCAP*. REMEMBER THIS. IT WILL SAVE YOU. 

• WHERE DO I PUT THIS SHIT:

–I like to keep separate documents for important threads while slapping all my miscellaneous or one-off replies into one long Misc Document.  If you’re less obsessive than I am, you have my permission to just dump everything into one document “MY BLOG CIRCA 2017 LOL.rtf” and move on with your life. This too is acceptable. I won’t tell Sauron. 

–I keep a folder for all my blog stuff. You can too! You can make folders by year, by category (”roleplay”, “asks”, “out of character”, ”headcanons”, “discourse™”, etc), or by muse! Or you can, once again, dump everything into “favorites” and forget about it until your grandchildren unearth it while looking for your last will and testament. 

WHAT ABOUT TUMBLR CHAT RP?:

–I’m so sorry.

–Just keep scrolling. Don’t get a hand cramp. 

–Good fucking luck. 

• UUUGGGHHHH:

–I know

–You can be as granular or as slapdash as you want to. It doesn’t have to take up your whole life, of even your whole day. Set aside the afternoon and see how far you get.  Try starting from the beginning! Seeing old stuff first tends to put the newer stuff in context and help you prioritize what you save.

–It may take way, way less time than you thought. Or, you may find yourself taking a walk down memory lane! You might have a grand old time reliving some classic RPs and fun times. It’s like going through your old year books; it can be kinda fun and kinda cringy and sometimes you’ll find something surprising that you’d totally forgotten about and it’ll be exciting.

–The first time is the worst, but each successive time you only have to catch up to where you left off.

–Just keep in mind what you’d seriously, seriously miss if tumblr stopped working tomorrow. Again, this will help you prioritize what you save. You don’t have to save everything! Some shitposts are just shitposts. Some old headcanons can slip quietly into the dark and be forgotten because you’ve grown and improved as a writer. 

I HOPE THIS HELPED! GOOD LUCK AND GODSPEED, MY INTREPID ARCHIVISTS!