Comments on: Can I download a website and all its contents for offline surfing?

Question: Can I download a website and all its contents for offline surfing?

HotPatatta — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:22:42 -0800

Can I download an entire website, including all hosted files, and burn it all onto a DVD-ROM for offline use? I'd like to be able to "surf" the site as if I'm using the real online version. I'm on a Mac.

I tried Wget but couldn't figure out how to use it.

By: leigh1

leigh1 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:34:34 -0800

Long time ago, before high speed internet, I used Teleport Pro.

By: leigh1

leigh1 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:36:22 -0800

Oh, I'm sorry, I didnt see the Mac part.

By: namewithoutwords

namewithoutwords — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:53:34 -0800

you were right to try wget.
heres an example, mirroring the site example.com, placing all files in a directory named example.com, with a two-second wait between requests, and converting all hyperlinks to be local:

wget --mirror -k -w 2 -p example.com --convert-links example.com

this is a one-off - wget is very very robust. spend some time with the documentation: man wget
to see everything it can do.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:57:21 -0800

SiteSucker (donationware)

By: mkultra

mkultra — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:59:43 -0800

Though, yes, wget is pretty awesome. There are actually several free GUI front-ends for it that may help you. Here's one.

By: HotPatatta

HotPatatta — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:07:11 -0800

Wget is waay too complicated for me. I have no idea how to use it. I know next to nothing about computers. I can log onto the Internet, type documents, and watch movies. That's about it. I need something really basic and self explanatory.

By: lizzicide

lizzicide — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:16:29 -0800

If anyone can chime in with a Windows solution, especially one that will work with Blackboard classes, I'd appreciate it.

By: Dipsomaniac

Dipsomaniac — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:38:09 -0800

I've used HTTrack before; works well, it's pretty simple for basic tasks, and it has ports for Windows, Mac and a bunch of Linux distros.

By: therubettes

therubettes — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:02:46 -0800

I second HTTrack . Used it in the past. Simple to use from memory.

By: JpMaxMan

JpMaxMan — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:29:58 -0800

WinWget?

http://lifehacker.com/5086682/winwget-makes-automated-downloads-a-breeze

By: JpMaxMan

JpMaxMan — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:31:40 -0800

Sorry - linked:

WinWget LifeHacker Article

WinWget Direct

By: JpMaxMan

JpMaxMan — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:33:29 -0800

Also for the OP in the lifeHacker article they link to their guide to mastering WGET from the command line. Might check it out.

By: futility closet

futility closet — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:42:28 -0800

Please be considerate of the host if you do this. Someone used to download my entire site every day, 3,000 pages, so he could stay up to date. It ran up my bandwidth bills and hosed my traffic stats.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:59:48 -0800

Speaking as a web site owner, whenever I see anyone doing this to my site, I ban them in my firewall so that they can never, ever visit again.

By: jjg

jjg — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:35:31 -0800

DeepVacuum is a very easy to use GUI front-end for wget for OS X.

By: rokusan

rokusan — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:51:44 -0800

As Futility and CG said, be sure to set a nice polite delay between pages when using this so you don't hammer a website unkindly.

By: gum

gum — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:49:23 -0800

There's a Mac frontend for wget called Get that you could try.

Alternatively, you could install the Scrapbook plugin for Firefox and use that to save pages selectively to view offline. It organizes saved pages much the same way your Bookmarks file does, and will save links, too. It's not a good tool to scrape an entire website, but it's a better tool than wget to, say, save all the tabs you have open to read offline later.