Exporting Photos

Hosting on Micro.blog
1

Good morning,

I’ve been reading here and found out how to download the posts in markdown, which is helpful. Exporting photos (“Uploads”) is a bit confusing though.

I understand that the other options to export, particularly “Download in blog archive format,” can be helpful, however, this is not a .ZIP file as indicated in some of the posts here as well as the official documentation: it is a .BAR file.

  1. Am I missing something, and there is a ZIP option that includes Photos?
  2. If downloading a .BAR file, how can I decompress it and get my uploads? I’m not familiar with this file extension.
2

Morning! Or afternoon, for me. :blush:

  1. A .bar file is just a .zip file, renamed with another file extension.
  2. Change the file extension to .zip and decompress it.
3

Ha…! @sod to the rescue :smiley:

So out of curiosity then, what is a .bar file used for?
May I make a suggestion then:

  1. Change the default to .zip instead of .bar as a more familiar extension
  2. Indicate in parenthesis that it can be renamed .bar for other uses, or, maybe include an option to download also as bar secondary if this can’t be done?

This could make photo export more accessible. What do you guys think? I will have documentation on my wiki ready by the end of the day I hope on my wiki (I always write these things down)

Also, as a person who doesn’t see other services offer such extensive export options, this is awesome to have! Thank you! I wish other apps (I’m looking at you, Swarm!) would have such great options.

4

It’s Manton’s proposed archiving format for blogs. Here’s the original proposal and some more info over at the IndieWeb wiki.

5

Thanks for that info. I understand the idea behind .bar files now. There’s maybe more room for discussion, but not here. I got the answer I needed fully, thank you!

6

This is a good suggestion until at least .bar is more familiar

7

Thanks. I do understand though, that on the platform he created, Manton wants to promote the idea of .bar files. It’s not just self-promotion of an idea, it’s also “in the spirit” of MB and I like it.

Perhaps then the solution is to do that the other way around, include something like “can be renamed to zip” or “read more here” and point to the post.

Meanwhile, I wrote a guide for it on my wiki to reflect the process as I understand it.

8

Thanks for writing this up on your wiki! I do agree that .bar files are not well-documented. We should add a note somewhere about renaming to .zip.

9

If it’s any help at all, feel free to use the wiki article (you should be able to grab it in Markdown if you click the little pencil icon to the top right) and use it. Love learning not just how MB works but also the little whys behind it :grinning: