Export
Export gives you the whole blog as a .zip in
the portable format: markdown files with YAML front
matter, blog.yaml, trip.yaml per trip, and posts.json.
Export is always available. It is not gated on a subscription, it works after a paid plan lapses, and it works if you never pay at all. A product built to hold your memories has no business holding them hostage; that is a policy, and this page is where it is written down.
What is in the archive
| Free | Paid | |
|---|---|---|
| Markdown files with front matter | yes | yes |
blog.yaml, trip.yaml, posts.json |
yes | yes |
| Drafts as well as published posts | yes | yes |
| Photo and video metadata — filename, capture time, alt text | yes | yes |
| The photo and video files | no | yes |
The only difference is the binaries. A free export still lists every photograph in the front matter, with its filename, capture time and alt text — so the archive is complete as a record of what you wrote and what was attached to it, and a later paid export drops the files into place beside the same names.
The per-trip PDF described in the product spec is not built yet. When it
exists it will be a rendering of the content, not part of the blog/ tree.
How it runs
- Start it from the export page in the editor.
- It runs in the background — a large blog with thousands of photographs takes a while.
- You get an email with a download link when it is done.
The link is signed and valid for seven days. It deliberately needs no login, because it arrives by email and has to work from a phone that is not signed in; what protects it is the signature, not a session. After seven days it stops working and says so — start a new export to get a fresh one.
One export at a time per blog. It is the most expensive thing an account can ask for, and it should not run twice because someone double-clicked.
After a lapse
If a paid plan lapses, the export keeps working and keeps producing the free archive. Nothing is deleted for twelve months. Read the whole policy on the pricing section.
Doing something with it
The archive is not an escape hatch you use once. It is the same format Ortszeit’s own import reads, so the round trip works:
export → edit the files in any editor → importThe format is documented and versioned so that tools other than ours can read it too.