There can be nothing worse than to login to Blogger one day and find you blogger blog gone, corrupted or deleted forever due to any unforseen error. Back up is very important. Here are a few simple ways to keep your Blogger blog safe and backed up….

Back up Blogger Posts

• Backup Your Posts - Bloggers Blogsend allows each of my blog posts to be automatically sent to my email address. So I have a back up of all my posts as individual emails. You can further create folders in your email account (as in Yahoo Mail) or apply labels (in Gmail), and create filters such that such emails can be collected in one place.
• Back up your entire blogger blog - Bloggers provides detailed instructions to create a single file with all your posts which you may publish and then copy to your own computer for use as desired. Remember to save a copy of your existing template in a file on your computer as you will need to have it at hand after this process is completed. This is good for a one time backup, but is cumbersome to do if you back up very frequently. Also you might mess up some setting and disbale your blog is not done right.
• Try third party back up tools - like the HTTrack Web site copier for Windows users and Webgrabber for Mac users. Each of these applications will create a fully working, interlinked local copy of your blog for browsing offline and easily allow you to back up. Remember it will take considerable time and internet bandwidth if you have a huge blog.

Back up Blog Template

• Back up the template whenever you change it. Just copy and paste the entire template code into any simple text editor like Notepad or Wordpad and save file with name like ‘myblog-date.txt’. After a while you will have a series of such files organized by date. If for some reason your blog goes away, just copy and paste the teplate back into Blogger and republish.
• If you have lost your template partly or fully - learn how to restore your blog template code and then back it up.

Back Up Blog Comments

• Blogger has an option to send you an email when someone leaves a comment on your blog. This is located in Setting > Comments option in Blogger. This enables you to collect all your comments as individual emails, much like the blogsend posts emails mentioned above. Then you can file them all together as labels or in a email folder.
• If you moderate comments, you can get all your comments as emails pending your approval. This email address can again be entered in Setting > Comments. If you do not want to save rejected comments as emails and recieve only published comments - then you can keep the comment moderation email address blank, while filling up the Comment Notification Address.
• If you use Haloscan Comments instead, then anyway your Blogger comments are off and Haloscan is keeping track of backing up your comments. I am using Blogger comments featured now with comment moderation, word verification captchas to combat comment spam.

Make blog back ups a habit and you will remember this post when it saves your blog on a bad day!

Google Gadgets are mini tools that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the web. Though you can Google gadgets to your iGoogle page, Google Desktop, Blogger, and Page Creator, its even cooler to show off Google gadgets on your own site. There are some very cool gadgets out there, and here are some of my top picks in random order.

10 Best Google Gadgets

1. Countdown - Counts down to a user specified date. Customize it to countdown to any blog event, contest closing date, poll closing date, blog anniversary etc. Here is another one with text only display. Keep reminding your visitors and never miss a deadline.

2. Google Translate My Page - Gives you a quick dropdown menu to allow non-english readers to select their native language and translate the page using Google translation services. You can also get more gadgets with language flags. This is a good way to make your blog multilingual and get read by a wide international audience.

3. Digg 2.0 - Discover the best news, images and videos as voted on by the Digg community. You can customize your Digg gadget by topic, and view more story information, such as comments and a friend’s activity feed. Share interesting content rocking the web right now. You can also add Google News or BBC News.

4. Slim RSS Reader - Lets you add a custom RSS feed to display on your blog. Enter the RSS feed, number of items, title and you are done. Customize more with Simple rss reader or support multiple feeds with CustomRSS. Display feeds from your favorite blogs or topical categories in your sidebar.

5. YouTube Gadget - Display the top YouTube videos on your site, and let visitors browse around the Youtube site as well as play the videos without leaving your site. If sharing videos is your style, you need this now. Also try Google Videos.

6. Google talk - Everyone has a google account mostly via gmail and if your visitors are logged in, this gadgets lets them see your contacts online right now and send them instant messages. You can publicize your gtalk id and chat with your readers.

7. Photo of the Minute - Grabs a new latest photo from Flickr. Remove the photo info to optimize the size better. There are lots of gadgets that can rotate an interesting photo, graffiti, captions or cartoons. Try the National Geographic daily photo, Photos from Flickr etc.

8. Google Calendar - If you mark your blogging events on a Google calendar and share your public calendar, then why not add it to your blog and publicize the events you track. Grab this official widget and never miss a event.

9. Dilbert widget - Dilbert cartoon strip is a daily read that will bring a smile on your visitors face. Grab the official widget, resize it and load the daily Dilbert color comic strips and ranking. Or opt for a random Dilbert strip.

10. Date & Time - Some people like to place a widget displaying the date, time and calendar. Add a clock to your page. Click edit to change it to the color of your choice. Narrow the width to remove the calendar.

How to add a Google Gadgets?

Select the gadget you like, click the “Add to your webpage” button, edit the Display settings, Click to “Preview changes” and the click “Get the code” button to generate the HTML. Copy and paste the HTML into your webpage’s source code and behold and surprise your visitors. Remember that most gadgets can be easily resized by dragging the window from the bottom right corner, before you decide the final size.

Got more time? here are all the Google Gadgets For Your Webpage. Let me know of other gadgets that deserve to be listed here and I will add them.