Help Me Restore My Blog Layout

April 22, 2012 10:15 AM

I screwed up my (Blogger) blog settings and lost my layout.

Trying to get back to the classic appearance, I went into "Template" and clicked "revert to classic". But I lost all my customization (including a long side panel of selected recommended articles), in addition to my font settings and stuff. And it looks like Internet Archive doesn't save blogs, so I have no way of rebuilding the data.

Help!

posted by Quisp Lover to computers & internet (5 answers total)

BTW, if it's not obvious, I'm not very adept at Blogger layout tools. If there's a simple way to restore this, don't assume I'd know about it! :)
posted by Quisp Lover at 10:24 AM on April 22, 2012

I'm sorry that I can't help you restore, but in the future when you have everything to your liking, you should go to "template" - then you'll see a button in the upper right hand corner that says "backup/restore" - this allows you to download and save your layout.

Do this (save your template) once you have everything to your liking. Then, if you lose your settings in the future, you'll be able to restore your blog easily.

Unfortunately, the "restore" part of the button only works if you already have a backup saved.
posted by insectosaurus at 10:48 AM on April 22, 2012

Thanks, that's good info.

I should note I use Apple Safari. I'm wondering if I can pull an old page somehow out of cache....? Anyone.....? At least that would make it easier to recompile the "selected articles" list....
posted by Quisp Lover at 10:51 AM on April 22, 2012

Yup. Went into my "Webpage Previews" folder, clicked around until I found a screenshot of my blog page. I got that listing back, plus a visual reminder of the rest of the layout, which I can now reconstruct.
posted by Quisp Lover at 10:58 AM on April 22, 2012

And, even better, when I went into the template area to start the work of reconfiguring, I tried, on a whim, updating again (i.e. reversing my prior command to "revert to classic templates").

And all the old stuff came back. Phew.

So....never mind!
posted by Quisp Lover at 11:04 AM on April 22, 2012