a PSA.

[theweaselking]

So, Six Apart sold Livejournal to a Russian company, and everyone's panicing and worrying because change ALWAYS means downtime and errors and potentially lost data and thse dirty Russians will sell their mothers for cheeseburgers and beer, and all that. Yes, yes, panic, whine, wank, OK I'm tired of it so you can STOP already.

And since two people have already asked me about this, here's LJArchive: a free open-source program to download your entire livejournal, including comments, and store it.
No, I haven't used it, so I don't know how well it works. I've simply found it, and had it recommended by people who *do* regularly back up their journals.

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Personally (she said from the honestly rather uninformed perspective of a layperson working for a Privacy Commissioner), I cannot see personal information from LJ becoming any less secure due to the change.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I use LJArchive. It's a breeze. Download and installation takes maybe 5 minutes if you have a DSL connection or equivalent. Backup time depends on how often you do it and how much you have to save, of course. It stores comments too, which I like.

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

I think the larger concern is the company's alleged connection to the Kremlin, and the implications it has for a) Russians opposed to Putin, and b) people opposed to Putin who plan on traveling to Russia.

I've used LJArchive - it seems to work pretty well.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

I do love you, John. I've been this*close to making pretty much the same post. So much misinformation being thrown around by the panicked!

I've been using LJ Archive since forever, and it's awesome. Years ago, when I fled Open Diary for something more reliable and secure, I imported all of those entries (about 1000, IIRC) with a tool Alistair wrote. Not long after, I found LJ Archive, and I've not worried about my journal since.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Oh cool, thanks. I have a separate writing LJ I've been meaning to back up for ages and I could never remember the link.