Migration and Back Up
All right, attention please! My fellow players, it is just about that time. IJ has purchased the servers and they are now being prepared for the switch (according to this Squeaky post.) They are also updating the OS on the servers and this may affect our journal layouts and/or user pics. So, while they may not have any real data loss they are still recommending we back up.
Looking around I found THIS post from 2007 that has a lot of information. Previously I posted about LJ Archive. They also have LJ Sec and LJ Migrate both which do more than just back up your posts, they enable you to transfer them. There are also some mac options available. Check out the post, it's a great resource of programs and tutorials.
Straight from that reference post: Migrating your icons --- Open your icon page (edit or allpics, doesn't matter) --- File --> save as --> Web page, complete --- Open the folder it saved to, there will be an image folder with all of your icons --- Use the multi-icon uploader to upload them to your new journal
As for backing up your custom style:
Log in to your character's journal and select Customize Journal from your Journal menu.
Open up a notepad or word or whatever you choose to use (I use Notepad++ because it's awesome)
Go back to your journal and click on Look and Feel.
Make a note of the basic settings on your notepad as you may need it later when you are re-installing your information. This includes your System Style (S1 or S2) as different custom styles may be S1 or S2.
Go back to your journal and click on Custom Options. In the Overrides section select all and copy to your clipboard.
Paste your overrides on your notepad.
Save your notepad to a safe place (I always recommend a cloud service such as dropbox.com, google drive, or box.com) If you lose your data, you can always fix it by going back to the notepad and copy/pasting the appropriate information.
Also a sidenote: did we know that Dreamwidth has a Import Journal tool that takes your entire journal and just zaps it over - comments/icons and all? So if worst ever comes to worst, there's always a place that we can turn to.
EDIT: Per request, this post has been made public so that it can be shared with other communities here on IJ. Feel free to drop any questions even if you don't belong to AA and I'll do my best to help you out. Thanks!