Home > Lensmaking Tips > UPDATED: About lens exports and recoverability

UPDATED: About lens exports and recoverability

Megan Casey by Megan Casey on Thu, Feb 16th, 2012

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bubble2 Updated! Earlier today, this post looked a little different. It posted recommendations for recovering lenses in the event of content loss. I am overwriting that post with this one, because I wanted to share some important clarifications and make sure we don’t set anyone’s hair on fire for no reason.

1. First, Squidoo’s not going to burn down. :)

2. Next, as you may rightly expect, keeping your content UP is clearly of paramount importance to us. We spend an extraordinary amount of time and resources to make sure no lenses are ever lost, that the content on lenses is functioning and safe and live. The vision of one day waking up and finding your good lenses gone, wiped out for no reason, is simply not a valid scenario. We wouldn’t have been able to see the success we’ve seen over the past 6 years if that were the case.

3. Just for fun, thought you might enjoy this stat: Measuring a very high activity 6 week period during the holidays and at the start of the year, we had a grand total of less than 3 minutes of site downtime. That’s beating most industry standards. Downtime is different from content loss, of course, but it’s fair to extrapolate that you can trust to performance.

4. Yes, we’re able to restore lenses that get accidentally deleted by a user.

5. If a lens gets locked due to a TOS violation, we notify the lensmaster that he has a period of time in which he is welcome to export and save the content of the lens to his hard drive and take the content elsewhere, since eventually we will be deleting it. But that’s not the same as saying: export your content because we’re afraid we’re going to lose it on accident.

6. As with lots of things in life, fear of Twilight Zone scenarios probably won’t get you very far. If you’re of the mindset that wants to take out insurance, so to speak, and export all your lenses or save printed versions of them, by all means, go for it. But I’d be loathe to see you add this as a necessity on your already long to-do lists in life, since the technical heart of our business is all about making your content available.

Hope that helps you sleep a little better.

About Megan Casey

Cofounder of Squidoo.

Comments:

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/thesuccess thesuccess

Oh my gosh, a job I never get to!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/GayleMcLaughlin GayleMcLaughlin

What a great idea! Thanks for the instructions on how to do this!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sockii sockii

Definitely a job I keep reminding myself to tackle soon…!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/RCGraphicsDesign RCGraphicsDesign

What great suggestions. Thank you for your lens.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/hlkljgk hlkljgk

i gotta get on this!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Susan52 Susan52

Trust me, fires happen. We use Carbonite online backup and are ever so happy that we do. After our house fire we bought new computers, loaded Carbonite and had our files restored quickly and very easily. Great advice, Kimberly!

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/getmoreinfo getmoreinfo

I have only heard good things about Carbonite, it is something I will look into.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Ruthi Ruthi

Thank you for the reminder to do this, as I have thought about backing up my Squidoo lenses, but have not done so. Time to put this at the top of my Squidoo ToDo List!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/timmytabs timmytabs

Love advise its always good to keep a back up file some where. Say is the story you told of the
A financial planner’s client a true story?
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/VTsquared VTsquared

Thanks for the how-to on saving lenses. This is a huge help.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/spirituality spirituality

Well, if you’re going to advise us to do individual backups, a print-style sheet would be nice. Printing my lenslist as is is a huge paperwaste in my case. Also, for some reason, in the preview the list doesn’t cover all my lenses.

Copying onto word results in 37 pages – that includes a line that says things like ‘edit, label, stats’ etc. for each lens.

Personally I think – bans and TOS violations aside – that you all have as much stake in keeping our information safe as we do and so I’ll trust you to do that.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Upon-Request Upon-Request

Good reminder. I use my Feedburner RSS feed (and saved a copy of it to Google Docs which I can access from anywhere)

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/fashionfajita fashionfajita

Does that work? All you need to do is save each lens’ RSS feed?

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sousababy sousababy

Yes, I learned the hard way – backup and save your work . . you never know when, how or by whose hand (fair or not) it is taken away. Rewriting my ‘Bullies at Work’ lens was painful for me. But, I was able to draw upon more recent study results, at least.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/flinnie flinnie

Hi thanks for the tips,I need to do this so glad to have this info.It would be a lot of work to rewrite my lens.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Jodi_k Jodi_k

Would it be possible to implement some sort of “mass backup” solution?
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/KitandCaboodle KitandCaboodle

Good advice!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/scarlettohairy scarlettohairy

Such good advice. I like the idea of doing a few a day to keep it manageable but to get it done.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/gypsyman27 gypsyman27

Due to my somewhat checkered past, I have experience with this problem. As an engineer, I sometimes would be assigned the job of supervising a group and I supervised several computer aided engineering and design groups. We would have problems, this was in the 80s and 90s and personal computers were new. Hard drives would inexplicably die and files would be lost. That created a need for separate drives to record your work, and to save the work in remote locations. A Squidoo lens is an important part of the lensmaster’s life, they should be backed up so that in case of disaster you can retrieve your work. Good advice here, I certainly appreciate the reminder. See you around the galaxy…
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/heehaw heehaw

i believe it is good to backup all lens , i wish we have option to backup all contents on squidoo , just like backup html file.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/burntchestnut burntchestnut

Don’t forget to save your lens each time you make updates, too. You can replace the previous one so you don’t have so many versions.

Take a look at the documents you save of your lenses. The document that you get when you click on the “Save my lens text to my computer” link in your workshop is an .xml file. An .xml file isn’t compatible with a Mac computer, so I save my lenses as a .pdf file. I’m sure there are conversion programs, but I don’t want to take the time to figure it out.

Another option if you don’t have a thumb drive handy or somewhere safe to keep it, is to send yourself a copy of each lens as you create or update it. Most of us have more than one email account. If not, get a free one from yahoo, gmail, or other free email service.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/mamabush mamabush

OMG, I can’t believe I never thought to back up my lenses! Just one more task I need to add to my never-ending Squidoo to-do list…
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/funmate funmate

Good advise! I do that!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/QueenKB QueenKB

What a great idea!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/espada2005 espada2005

Oh my god
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/imaginemdd imaginemdd

Such good advice to do it regularly and a few per day. We update them all the time, this way you’ll be sure to be getting the most current versions backed up. I also save them to the hard drive first. and if you have a service that backs up what’s on your hard drive automatically you’re covered there, too. Thanks for the reminder.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/kevinw1 kevinw1

I’ve always wondered what the thinking is behind the XML files that Squidoo makes as a backup. If there was a way to restore them directly, it would make sense, but there isn’t one that I know of. It’s also a long and boring manual process if you have more than a few lenses.

I make lens backups by opening the lens in my browser and then doing a “File / Save Page As” and choose “Webpage, Complete” (in Chrome – your browser may use different terminology but it will have a method for you to do this). This saves the page as HTML AND it saves all the pictures too. (It also saves all the ads which you really don’t need, but doesn’t do any harm). This is both quicker than Squidoo’s backup – you can just use the Ctrl-S keyboard shortcut – and the resulting backup is much more useful though it does take more disk space.

Then Mozy auto-saves all the important stuff on my computer every night to servers elsewhere, including my SQ lenses.

The ideal system would let us click one button and back up all our lenses automatically, in a useful format. I wonder if Fluff could work up something like that…

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Helene-Malmsio Helene-Malmsio

Thank you so much about your post on how to best save squidoo pages on file (File/save page as/webpage,complete) I’ll be doing this with my 300 or so lenses so the I don’t have to sweat about it anymore!

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/lensesbyjames lensesbyjames

This is an excellent idea thanks for the info.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/matejakoc matejakoc

thanks for a good advice
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/LiteraryMind LiteraryMind

Wow! I thought all our lenses would be backed up somewhere. Guess, I would be in shock if something happened. Good that you let us know.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/ZodiacImmortal ZodiacImmortal

I’m going to have to set aside some time & memory for this!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/SoundFinance SoundFinance

I also thought that Squidoo would have lenses backed up somewhere..just shows not to assume!
I have had the experience over the last year where my hard drive crashed – I had been using an external hard drive which ALSO failed. These were replaced under warranty and extended warranty but you can see my dilema…my backup was my external hard drive! Within 7 months the replaced hard drive crashed also and now my laptop is in the repairers for two other issues – after only having it back for a week. The Christchurch earthquakes have possibly had something to do with the hard drive problems. And I still don’t have my laptop back! Frustrating to say the least!My savior has been using Drop Box…magic. I’d recommend using it for sure. See dropbox.com
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/uneasywriter uneasywriter

Interesting, thanks for the information!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/theraggededge theraggededge

I do exactly what KevinW1 does, save the whole page as an html file and then let Mozy back them up daily.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Angelgirl1976 Angelgirl1976

I save everything, habit from work really but still interesting and learned something new as I did not know that lens were not backed up by squidoo. I always learn new things from squidoo thanks for the info :)

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Helene-Malmsio Helene-Malmsio

How do we get that service from Mozy?

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/kevinw1 kevinw1

This is the one I use, their Home service.:
http://mozy.com/home

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/intermarks intermarks

Thank you for reminding, backing up data is really crucial because I have experienced it myself when I lost all my photos when my hard disk crashed and all data were unrecoverable.
Megan Casey

I wanted to let you know that I’ve updated this post with some important clarifications. Please take a fresh read. The original post’s intentions were noble, but I wanted to make sure you knew that the ‘better safe than sorry’ approach to saving your lenses should be one of personal preference for you, and not a recommended Squidoo stance or a signal that we’re careless with your content. We’re in the business of keeping your lenses *up*! I hope this helps you sleep a little better at night. – Megan

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/gypsyman27 gypsyman27

The “we’re not gonna burn down” comment was pretty funny. I recommended saving files as a precaution, but I had no intention of doing so myself. I’m a do what I say not what I do, kind of guy. Comes from being a Dad.:~) You know what I mean, smoking like a chimney while telling my children not to smoke.:~) See you around the galaxy…
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/TopMovieSoundtracks TopMovieSoundtracks

Thanks for the clarification and as always for all you and your team do. Wow — has it already been 6 years!!!!
http://www.allconsidering.com/ Katinka Hesselink

Thanks, it does sound way better this way.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/louboutin1989 louboutin1989

what a great idea , i like it .
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/intermarks intermarks

Thank you for the clarification, at least this sound much better.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/lestroischenes lestroischenes

Ok, now this is going to sound like a really dim question, but when you press the ‘
Save my lens text to my computer’ text, where does it go??? I can’t find it.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/sukriti1 sukriti1

Thanks that’s great.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Karen_Knight_Bennett Karen_Knight_Bennett

Thanks for the lens. I never thought about backing up my lens.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/anupma anupma

Thanks for advise. It will certainly be helpful to us.
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/SocialNetMediaToday SocialNetMediaToday

Thanks for the information how to restore a lens. My memory span was low on my computer. And I almost was not able to save it. But thanks to your article on recoverability has helped. I owe you a big thanks! Way to go Megan. Wishing you all the success!
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/JackieSonia JackieSonia

Thanks. I don’t have that many lenses to back up. Only four. But this is certainly good to know since I can start now at a low number instead of having 200 lenses to backup. Will make it a habit now.

http://www.squidoo.com Kimberly Dawn Wells

That is true! Start now and it will be very easy to keep up with.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/dogcote008 dogcote008

I have appreciate with getting lot of good and reliable information with your post…….

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