Moving out of a gated community into Hermitsville

December 12, 2014 8:53 AM

Pinterest is behaving more and more like a gated community when I'm not logged in first and I'm not fond of some of the other recent changes, like the addition of auto-generated keywords to the bookmarks I post. I want to keep the account, but move my bookmarking habits elsewhere. Is there a way to bulk export my pinterest content with minimal fuss that doesn't break the years of work I've put into using a 3rd party solution?

Additionally, is there a self hosted solution to bookmarking that is a cross between the tagging of del.icio.us with the visual assistance of pinterest? I have a site that runs wordpress, but willing to try out other options.

And, bonus points (I feel like I'm asking for the moon!) if I can neatly transition from pinterest to _____.

posted by redindiaink to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

It's not visual at all, but I've been very happy over at Pinboard. However, it looks like the only way of getting your pins out of Pinterest at the moment is a horrible hacky RSS workaround (which is as good a reason as any to ditch it). Once you have structured data exported from Pinterest, Pinboard will very likely be able to import it.
posted by Happy Dave at 2:08 PM on December 12, 2014

Seconding Pinboard, although it doens't have the photo option as far as I'm aware.
posted by rainbowbrite at 2:32 PM on December 12, 2014

Evernote would be a good thing to try if you really need the pictures. If you can do without, I will third Pinboard.

For exporting, if that RSS hack doesn't work, I have another idea. (It sounds like it will except that it can be difficult to get really old content from RSS feeds.) It is still pretty hacky and not automatic, but better than cutting and pasting. IFTTT.com will allow you to set up channels and recipes so that anything you pin on Pinterest gets copied to Evernote. If you set it up today, it won't grab all the old pins, just any new ones. To get all your old pins to go to Evernote, you could set up a new Pinterest account and follow all of the boards on your old account. Then, repin everything you want exported to Evernote. The recipe should import tags and pictures if you set it up that way.
If you don't like Evernote, some of the other channels available on IFTTT might work for you. There are a lot of options, including Google Drive and email for you to have a backup/private copy of your pins.
posted by soelo at 1:37 PM on December 15, 2014

I knew I had my Pinterest pins being saved somewhere, but it turns out I was using the RSS feed and Pinterest is not a channel on IFTTT. On the bright side, I can tell you that the recipe is working.
posted by soelo at 9:01 PM on December 15, 2014

If you're considering Pinboard, he's about to switch to a new, yearly pricing model, instead of the slowly-rising one-time fee it is currently. If you start an account before January 1st, you'll be grandfathered in on the old model.
posted by Happy Dave at 11:43 PM on December 17, 2014