AFTR TUMBLR: 7a. Download
The ban will now become active in 9 days. They promised not to delete accounts, only flagged content.
So finding a new place to move is important, but let’s not forget to also preserve your content before it gets erased by overzealous puritanical bots.
1. Tumblr’s export tool
For all Tumblr’s flaws, their own export tool isn’t that bad.
The instructions are here. It’s not clear whether you can do this from the app, but considered the size of this export (mine was a 4.5Gb zip!), it’s probably safer to do it on a computer anyway.
If you don’t have a computer and only use the app, I suggest you do this at a friend’s and download the archive on a large enough USB stick. Don’t forget to log out when you leave ;)
Once you request your archive, it can take some time for Tumblr to build it, so don’t wait until the last minute, DO IT NOW! For all your blogs and secondaries.
What do you get in that zip file?
- an archive of your DMs in a single XML file - an archive of your posts and drafts in a single XML file and separated HTML files - a media folder with all the pictures related to your chats, posts and drafts
It’s not perfect. XML files are half-readable for human beings. The pictures in the archived posts link to Tumblr’s server, so these links won’t work with the content erased on the 17th.There’s a copy of all these pics in the media folder, but there is some work to do to link the pics back to their original post.
So in summary, you’ll have to count on people to develop some tools that will make that archive more usable. But in the meantime JUST DOWNLOAD IT.
2. Other download tools
If you’re on Windows, TumblrThree let’s you easily download public and hidden blogs. It has a lot of options, although it seems to struggle with some videos.
If you’re ready to type into the command line, tumblr-utils is a tool to make a nice archive of you blog’s public content (no protected blogs, no drafts, no private likes, no chats). It does so in a nice format, actually keeping pictures and posts together, as well as building a browsable archive. It seems to have troubles downloading video and audio posts, though. If you’re not familiar with using the command line, there’s a tutorial for beginners here, and a video tutorial here.
Hey folks! Follow these instructions to be sure your blog content is not lost!! Thank you @in-a-top-hat
