Creating an online archive through Google Drive

If you publish articles, essays, stories or poems through an online publisher, and it shuts down its website, you lose all documents you haven't archived. While you are creating any online document, you might write text directly into a publisher's website. Although this is convenient, you risk losing your work forever if you don't make a backup copy. Therefore, you should archive all your online documents.

You can create an archive either in cloud storage, through an online productivity suite such as Google Drive, or offline on your PC drive or its external media, through an offline productivity suite such as LibreOffice. This document can help you build an archive by creating archive folders, creating portable document files (PDFs), creating archive text files, and archiving image files.

Note: This document specifically applies to creating an online archive through Google Drive, and generally to creating an online or offline archive through other software suites. Therefore, this document can serve as a guideline regardless of your particular writing tools and preferences.

Creating archive folders

Archive folders are appropriate folders and subfolders that help you organize your archive files. You can create a main folder, a subfolder for each publisher, and a sub-subfolder for each document. Here's an example hierarchy:

MyOnlineArchive (main) - contains three publisher folders:
AcmePubs (publisher)
FlyByNitePubs (publisher) - contains two document folders:
HowToWaxYourCeiling (document)
UnderstandingArcticAlligators (document)
GizmochePubs (publisher)

Figure 1 shows the above hierarchy as created in Google Drive folders.

Figure 1 - Example archive folders

Creating archive PDFs

An archive PDF is the primary backup file for your online document because a PDF preserves your original formatting. You should start creating your archive PDFs after creating your archive folders according to the section above. For each online document you wish to archive, create a PDF and then save it in that document's archive folder. Later, if necessary, you can use the archive PDF as a source for a new document that you publish on another website.

Note: You shouldn't simply copy text from your online document and paste it into a text file because this does not preserve your original formatting 

The specific procedure for creating a PDF varies according to your PC and its operating system. Generally, you can create an archive PDF as follows:

1. Right-click anywhere in the document to display a Print menu as shown in Figure 2. 
2. Click Print to display its window, and then select Print to file. If the window displays a Destination field, and it does not contain "Save as PDF," click Change to display a Select-a-destination window, and then click Save as PDF.
3. According to the title of your online document, name its archive PDF appropriately, such as Understanding_Arctic_alligators.pdf.
4. Click Save, select your target folder, such as UnderstandingArcticAlligators, click Open, and then click Save to generate your archive PDF.
5. Verify that your archive PDF is in its appropriate folder, such as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 2 - Selecting your print menu

Figure 3 - An example archive PDF in its appropriate document folder

Creating archive text files
After creating your archive folders and archive PDFs according to the sections above, you can create archive text files. To create an archive text file, do the following:

1. Open the archive PDF from which wish to create a new document.
2. Create a new word-processor document, such as a new Google Docs document in Google Drive.
3. Copy text from your PDF and then paste it into the word-processor document that is your archive text file.
4. Rename the archive text file to match your archive PDF.
5. Save your archive text file into its appropriate document folder, such as UnderstandingArcticAlligators, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 - Adding a text file to a document folder

Archiving image files

As shown in Figure 5, you can add image files to any document folder.

Figure 5 - Adding image files to a document folder