Blogger Photo Restoration Complete! (How I Fixed the Google Plus "Mess"-- You're Welcome)

I am not going to tell you the last few days has been easy. A nightmare is more like it. (Felt like I was trapped in a cage with spider monkeys.) This "blog photo disappearing act" tragedy has happened to other blogspot bloggers. I feel your pain and possibly this made me even more determined to find a solution to this mess that nearly wiped out SIX YEARS of my digital life. Here's a caveat to remember: if you are going to blog on a free platform, recognize there are risks you take in doing so. I don't claim to know the inner workings of Google any more than the next person. However, I sort of have an "in" with regard to how search works (those digital footprints and detritus)--and his name is Dr. Thyme. So to you DH for these little monster moments you had to endure as I sat feverishly plucking my blog posts from cyberspace (dear god, over 450 of them)--thank you for your patience and understanding--and tissue-box-replacer man.

I hope in sharing my story, I am able to help at least one more person who may experience a similar meltdown, er, "problem". Or prevent the same disaster from happening to someone else.

Now for the details--and this is not complicated, but is very time consumptive:  

My biggest recommendation is: backup and restore your blog. Often. 

If you have realized your photos have disappeared in your blog within a reasonable amount of time--like that same day, AND have not emptied your trash, there is a tutorial to help you re-select the images you'd like to recover--and supposedly they will re-populate within your blog. (You can find the directions in blogger community discussion threads--this wasn't how I fixed my problem, however, because I had already "emptied" my trash. . . because I'm a good housekeeper that way.) And before you say, Well why didn't you just have ALL those fancy food shots stored away on your hard drive? Many are and were. . . but it's food, I didn't keep ALL of them. Lesson learned.

Here' what I did: Since I had already emptied my trash of photos I deleted in Google+, which in turn deleted them in my blogspot account--to my complete and utter surprise and dismay (even though a small box appears telling you in summary and NOT in very bright yellow glaring flashing letters "deleting from Google+ will delete from all Google platforms, blah, blah blah, Blogger. . . "). Did I see this box? Um, maybe, maybe not. But did it make enough of an impression on me to give me pause. Um, obviously NOT. And I haven't been the first person to say so. Again. Free. Blogging.

  My first order of business was to delete from every post, the strange dark oval left over from the Google+ snafu. The deletion of these (though tedious and mind numbing) gave me a sense of calm/control. My text remained. It didn't look like a cyber burglary had taken place.

Then, it dawned on me to begin combing through the images in Google to try to track down and salvage Vegan Thyme photos. Lo and behold, many of these were in Pinterest and also in Google Images. (Thank you!) I had to copy and paste each and every blog title exactly in the Google search box within Google Images to find exactly which of my specific blog post's photos were still on the Google servers.

**Several photos are still in cyberspace somewhere--unable to be returned to their little blog post home! I find this both infuriating and a little creepy. Even creepier were the dark ovals appearing in posts where I've missed catching one and deleting it. 

Luckily, the servers had not yet begun their massive "delete" of my entire photo history from my Google+ fiasco yet, but that may have been because I realized this within a few days--as in, I checked in on my blog two days after The Big Photo Dump, and went into rapid response mode: over four hundred posts to search out my photos. Why? Because it matters and it's nearly six years of my life! MY photos. (In the Terms of Service you agree to--in the fine print area--this means Google's photos.) Which is fine, I AM, after all, using THEIR service for FREE. I have no problem with this, the free part especially, but am seriously reconsidering this right now. 

Thankfully because Google had cached my photos on their servers, that is where they still resided. I simply "copied and pasted" MY PHOTOS back into MY BLOG. (Now I hope to goodness the photos aren't suddenly going to go away again over some "cray-cray" server dump.)

The spider monkeys may return.

Google is the strongest search engine out there. By strong I mean, this is where the majority of all search happens. This is why my path to photo restoration was not as riddled with heartache and disappointment had I been using some other blog hosting system. I also like the blog security features Google offers. This is especially true with regard to the comment section. The Google security feature in this area has helped keep a lot of riff-raff away.    

Here is my gripe, but again, this may be fruitless. 

I realize there is a strong likelihood Google is placing most of its energy in areas of the business where there is money to be made--free blogger accounts probably aren't on the radar. But still, a service for which Google's name is attached and for which thousands upon thousands of blogspot users have placed their trust, a little more attention to this wouldn't hurt. 

(*A discussion for another post perhaps, "Why offer a free blog platform then?")

If you are not averse to spending a little money for peace of mind, "TeleportPro" is an option. You can search for them and find their program downloadable, a website saving software. TP downloads your entire blog and photos onto your hard drive and stores it. It keeps the pictures and blog post headings linked, so if you were to have to re-upload your entire photo history to your blog (god help us)--they're all stored in one location. 

Here are some other options. There are various blog hosting platforms. One is Wordpress. I have not used Wordpress yet, but have created a Vegan Thyme page within their blog hosting site. For instance, if there ever were to come a day when I migrate my blog over to their system--Vegan Thyme is there. This would require a bit of code savvy, and I feel I am code savvy--at least for someone my age (over fifty), so would not be deterred. However, I would use the Wordpress "paid-for" blogging host program if I were to switch. 

(They offer a basic free platform vs. a paid for.) 

Overall, I have enjoyed my Blogger account experience. I like the massive reach Google has in search and audience. I consider Vegan Thyme to be a small blog. Well, it is a small blog. And I am not doing this to generate any revenue. 

I blog because it is my own personal outlet, creatively and historically. From a mind exercise standpoint--it helps, too. And because I believe the vegan life is the BEST life. 

I want a written history of my recipes--I may not be able to cook some day--and godforbid, someone else may have to cook my meals for me. (Here you go--just go to my blog!) I may not be able to garden, but my garden journal will have been preserved and I'll be able to reflect back on the "once was" time in the yard. And my dogs, my husband, my knitting and all the other MY things I've written about over the years matter a great deal to me and have been preserved here for just such purpose.