How to EASILY Backup your Tumblr blog on a Mac
So, you want to back up your blog from Tumblr, and youâve got a Mac. Youâve seen all the posts flying around about Python scripts and PCs and Command Lines but you have no idea what the heck theyâre talking about. You may have never even launched Terminal, or if you have, you didnât leave it open for long.
Fear not, my fellow fruity-computey friends! This post is for you!
There are a few things you need to do before we really get going. Donât skip these or you may make yourself very sad, or - worst case scenario - you may cause your computer to crash and have a hard time getting it to boot again.
Make Sure Your Blog is Visible
First off, in order for this to work your blog must not be hidden.
To check this, from your dashboard in the browser window, click on the little non-gender-specific human in the upper-right of the page to go to your account. Under âTUMBLRSâ on the right, find the blog you want to make visible, and click âEdit appearanceâ below it. Scroll down and find the âVisibilityâ section.
Make sure the top slider, labelled âHide <yourblog>.tumblr.comâ is OFF, i.e., greyed out. (It doesnât matter if youâre hidden from search results, or marked as explicit.)
Drive Space
Have plenty of it. Seriously. You DO NOT want to completely fill your hard drive with all those genius memes you created since 2014, and then come to find out your lappy doesnât boot because thereâs zero free space. If it starts to get close to full, you can stop the script in the middles by hitting ctrl+C. Try it again after youâve cleared out more space.
Patience
Youâre probably going to need it. If you have seven blogs youâve been posting GIFs on every hour since 2010, youâll want to back them up only one or two at a time. Just go through the directions more than once, using the names of each of your blogs.
The Next Bit
GO here:Â
https://gist.github.com/doersino/7e3e5db591e42bf543e1
Select and COPY everything in the box labelled âbackup_tumblr.shâ. There should be 68 lines of text, starting with â#!/bin/bashâ and ending with âtb_clean_up 0â.
OPEN any text editor and paste all of this text into a blank document.
FIND line number eight where it reads,
BLOGS="neondust.tumblr.com aufgeloest.tumblr.com hejlisten.tumblr.com"
REPLACE the text inside the quotation marks to the name(s) of the blog(s) you want to back up. (YES, you can do more than one at a time!) Be sure to put a space in-between the names of the blogs if youâre backing up more than one blog. Also, be sure not to delete or change the quotation marks.
SAVE this as a file named âbackup_tumblr.shâ on your Desktop.
Congratulations, you just created a bash script!
The Crux of the Tale
OPEN Terminal on your Mac. If youâre not familiar with Terminal, itâs inside your âApplicationsâ folder, in a folder named âUtilitiesâ. Alternatively, you can just hit command + space bar to bring up the search window, and type âterminalâ in the field. Hit return to launch the app when âterminal.appâ pops up in the window.
TYPE (or copy/paste) this exactly: âbash ~/Desktop/backup_tumblr.shâ (without quotes) into terminal and press Enter.
If youâve done everything correctly, the script will do several things at that point:
It sets up the environment (creates folder structures on your desktop) for each blog youâre backing up.
It downloads the python script that does the heavy lifting.
It runs that script against the blogs you specified, which does all sorts of computery magic. (Youâll be able to see the progress in the Terminal window.)
When itâs done backing up all the posts, media, etc., it cleans up after itself. Meaning, it deletes the python script it downloaded earlier.
Once itâs done, youâll find the folder or folders on your desktop named with the date you ran the script, and the name of the blog each folder contains. All the delicious goodness is inside, including an index.html which you can open in any browser. Itâs contains a list of all your blog posts organized by date. This is the easiest way to see everything that was downloaded.
Things to be aware of
You can abort the backup at any time by pressing ctrl+C (this might take a few seconds). This will become necessary if you start to fill up your boot drive.Â
If you have posts that contain links to external media, or sites, you will get errors if those resources are no longer available in the location you linked.
The original Python script has a number of options can be changed. If youâre feeling adventurous, or just love switches on scripts, feel free to check them out at bbolliâs github, linked below. I wonât try to use this post to tell you how to use them, or it would be about a thousand pages longer than it already is.
Disclaimer
I am not the creator of either the Bash script or Python scripts this technique uses. Iâve included links to the original creatorsâ sites, so please give them your kudos if you feel the need. Iâm just a dude who looked over the code and parsed through the directions and got it to work for me. Iâm hoping to help others by passing on the knowledge I gleaned in the process.
Having said that, you should be aware that you are using this code at your own risk.Â
Any time you download code or software from an unverified source (and sometimes from a verified source), you are taking a risk. Very bad things can, and do, happen to computers when people run unsafe software and/or code. I sincerely hope this doesnât happen to you while using these instructions, but, goddess forbid, if it does, it is your responsibility, and in no way mine.
Sorry, and it sucks to have to say it, but I have to, âcause, Â reasons.
At any rate, good luck!
Sources:
https://github.com/bbolli/tumblr-utils/blob/master/tumblr_backup.md
http://neondust.tumblr.com/post/97723922505/simple-tumblr-backup-script-for-mac-os-x-and-linux
https://gist.github.com/doersino/7e3e5db591e42bf543e1#file-backup_tumblr-sh
@theleftpill
I followed these instructions, and am watching as my backup downloads â thank you!
Some tips for Mac users who donât usually deal with text files:Â
If you paste the code into TextEditor, remember to go format -> plain text, or else it will save as an rtf.
At least on my computer, TextEditor defaulted to changing all the quotation marks to smart quotes, so I got an error message until I went back and fixed them.Â
Everything else was easy peasy.Â
Itâs been running for about three minutes, and has already downloaded 2500 out of my 6000-odd posts.Â
Tested it out on my dead side blogs with about 200 posts between them and it took like a minute to download all three, and they are all nicely formatted and everything :D















