Why Pin4Ever?
I love Pinterest. I think it’s one of the best inventions since the internet itself. I’ve always had thousands of bookmarks but, being visual, I always had trouble finding what I’d bookmarked when I went back for it. Pinterest‘s visual format is perfect for me! (The social aspect of it is an added perk, as it helps me find good content. But even if it didn’t have that, I’d still use it.) The downside is that Pinterest is lacking a way to back up all of those great links. I can save an HTML file of my Firefox bookmarks pretty easily. My Pin boards, not so much. I currently have 121 boards, with over 5,000 pins! (And that’s just on one account. I actually have three accounts, for different sites/purposes.)
That’s why Pin4Ever is so brilliant. It provides a way to back up all of your Pins (except private boards, as best I can tell – I think the software isn’t able to access those). Not only that, it does so in a way that is extremely user-friendly and provides benefits that even Pinterest itself doesn’t have (like the ability to search your Pins).
How Does it Work?
Pin4Ever is Java-based software, allowing it to work cross-platform. In case you don’t know what that means, it means that you can back up Pins whether you’re running Windows, Linux, or a Mac. (There’s an Android app, too.) Sign up and try the free trial backup. You’ll be asked for permission to run the software (which runs from their server, saving space on your computer), and it will begin downloading your Pins. I think my computer might have crashed the first time I tried to run it (‘though my toddler may have had something to do with that, as I walked away while it ran), but it ran flawlessly on the second attempt, so I think that was just a glitch.
The Pin4Ever software behaves like a separate browser on your computer. When you open it up (after having run the backup at least once), you’ll see a “home” board that looks something like this:
Those large buttons across the top are the – very simple – controls. They’ll let you run a backup, visit the Pin4Ever site, browse to the folder where your Pins are stored, etc. Because my screen isn’t very large top-to-bottom, you may or may not be able to see what all is displayed on the board itself. At the far right, you see where my boards begin. (You can scroll down to see the remaining boards, just like on Pinterest itself. Except not in my screenshot. 😉 ) In the middle is the “top 100 Pins” board. This is a feature of Pin4Ever. It shows you which of your Pins are most popular, based on the number of pins/repins.
At the far left is one of my favorite features – the search box! One weakness of Pinterest, in my opinion, is that, although you can search Pinterest, you can’t search your boards. This lets you do exactly that, making it even easier to find that one particular thing.
There are several different display, or “skin”-type options, but they are purely aesthetic. When you click on a board, you see more-or-less what you’d see on that board at Pinterest:
The only real difference (besides the visual design) is that it shows the date the backup was last updated. (See at the top where it says “Plain, Sticky Notes, Corkboard”? Those are the other display options.)
A Pin shows all of the key information you would expect a Pin to have, like this:
The picture is there, along with whatever description you used. There’s a link to the source link and the Pin on Pinterest (both are clickable), and then a count of how many likes/repins the Pin has.
If you prefer to find things a bit more manually (not that I know why you’d want to!), or to maybe save periodic backups to disc or something, you can choose to open the folder where your Pins are stored. The organization here is pretty simple to follow. First, you’ll see a series of folders named according to your Pinboard names.
If you click on a board’s folder, to open it, you’ll see a single HTML file (that holds all the information about the links, etc.) along with image files for each Pin image.
Options
There are a number of Pin4Ever options available. You can purchase an individual backup, or unlimited subscriptions for various periods of time. There is a free trial available which will give you a single backup, and is definitely worth trying out.
In Case You Were Wondering…
- As best I can tell, Pin4Ever does not back up private boards. (I suspect there is no way for the software to access them, since they’re locked.)
- If you use multiple Pinterest accounts, you will need to have separate Pin4Ever accounts for each one you want to back up. The way the software is currently designed, your account is what gives it the information it needs to log in and download your Pins. However, you should not need to install the Pin4Ever software multiple times.
- Each time you download your Pins, every Pin (not on a private board) is individually downloaded, as is the board’s information (links, descriptions, etc.). These are not deleted from the folders on your computer at any time (unless, of course, you delete one manually). So if you back up your boards today, then delete five Pins and back up again tomorrow, those five Pin images will still be present in your backup folder(s), but the Pins will no longer show up on the board, because the HTML file will be overridden. (This is the one reason I can think of that you might want to periodically copy your backup files to disc. If you’re planning to do some rearranging, you might want to save the backup as-is, and then rearrange.)
- Pin4Ever is not owned by or integrated with Pinterest, so if you should lose your Pins, you cannot simply upload them to restore your boards. However, you will have them all readily accessible, links and all, so you can recreate the board(s) much more readily than if you had to do it completely by hand.
Win It!
Are you interested in a 6-month unlimited backup plan? Of course you are! Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below to win a free 6-month unlimited account.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Disclosure: I am being compensated for this review with a free account of my own and, of course, Pin4Ever is providing the prize to the winner. As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
Shared at Pintastic Tuesday.
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