How to download a site for archiving

Web archiving is the answer. With regular screenshots by your side, you can be up-to-date on what changed and when. Marketing is all about having an edge over your competitors. Keeping a keen eye on them makes it pretty easy. My friend Jack owns an ecommerce store that sells apparel. One of his customers was about to leverage the deal and got timed out. Hence, instead of the discounted price, he ended up paying the original price of the product and he was very furious about it. He assumed that if he added the product to the Cart during the sale period, he would get it for the discounted price.

Now, something that looked like ignorance turned out to be a lawsuit for Jack. In such cases, having screenshots of everything that is said on your website makes the process much easier. Since, Jack kept a record of every page of his website, he used the General Terms and Conditions page as evidence and got rid of lawsuit faster than we might believe.

Website archiving is a must-have for combating legal issues. With regular screenshots, you can stay carefree in case someone makes a false claim. The demand for older or historical content is growing rapidly.

Website backups and archives work in very different way. Regular backups ensure that your website stays safe even if something gets messed up and files get removed from the server. On the other hand, archiving provides you control over visual things.

Many businesses need to keep a detailed record of any kind of electronic communication they do. Failing to do that may result in serious problems. With your own archive record handy, you can stay prepared for such issues and make sure you are at winning side. Apart from what I have mentioned above, web archiving can be helpful in trend tracking and analyzing your competitors as well as brand management.

Here comes the real meat you have been waiting for. There are several ways you can perform archiving. I will be sharing all of the options with relevant scenarios. Before you do that, here are some points to consider:.

These questions will help you identify the right content and duration of archiving. Not all content needs to be stored for years. For example, you are generally required to keep financial records for minimum 7 years.

Check out this Chrome extension from Fireshot. All you have to do is install the extension in Chrome and click on the little icon at the top right. If you are flooded with too many Chrome extensions, here is an alternative:. Pros: These are free and easy to use. Automation is missing too. You can save that as PDF. This is great when you are focused on content only.

As mentioned above, use this one if content is your major focus. If visuals are important, you will want to stay away from this one. Url2png is primarily focused on creating thumbnails and screenshots for multiple websites. As I said, the target market for Url2png is businesses looking for bulk screenshots of their applications.

Furthermore, these tools are specifically aimed at technically minded users, as the primary interface is designed to call their API to program own capture jobs.

Wayback Machine is solely designed to store web pages across the Internet. Pros: With Wayback Machine, you can also check historical data of any web page. All you need to do is enter the URL into the search bar and you will get a complete timeline of the web versions.

Free and open-source. My choice! Warrick - Main site seems down. Wayback downloader , a service that will download your site from the Wayback Machine and even add a plugin for Wordpress. Not free. Improve this answer. That Brazilian Guy 6, 10 10 gold badges 61 61 silver badges 99 99 bronze badges. Tobias Reithmeier Tobias Reithmeier 1, 7 7 silver badges 6 6 bronze badges. ComicSans, On the page you've linked, what is an Archive Team grab??

October , the Wayback Machine Downloader still works. It can be used to construct an index of pages to download and avoid heuristics to detect links in webpages. For each link, there is also the date of the first version and the last version.

These are the basics to build a script to download everything from a given domain. Peanut 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 12 12 bronze badges. You should really use the API instead archive. So that page is focused on the graphical interface, which is both superseded and inadequate for this task. A python script can also be found here: gist. Not a problem if a site has just a few pages, but if it has thousands of them, you'd spend entire weeks downloading those pages manually.

Enter Website Downloader: the free service lets you download a website's entire archive to the local system. All you have to do is type the URL that you want to download on the Website Downloader site, and select whether you want to download the homepage only, or the entire website. Note : It may take minutes or longer for the site to be processed by Website Downloader.

The process itself is straightforward. The service grabs each HTML file of the site or just one if you select to download a single URL , and clones it to the local hard drive of the computer. Links are converted automatically so that they can be used off-line, and images, PDF documents, CSS and JavaScript files are downloaded and referenced correctly as well.

You may download the copy of the site as a zip file to your local system after the background process completes, or use the service to get a quote and get the copy converted to a WordPress site. Website Downloader is an interesting service. It was swarmed with requests at the time of the review, and you may also experience that the generation of website downloads, even of single pages, takes longer than it should because of that.

There is also the chance that some people will abuse the service by downloading entire websites, and publishing them again on the Internet. The idea of the tool is very attractive, anyway. Not finished yet. Wow, this really takes a long time. No indication of estimated time left, either. The progress bar is useless : once it has covered its course, it begins all over again. Clairvaux Same here. Tried several times to download something from wayback machine each more than 3 hours.

So, what are this Website Copier and this Website Ripper? Similar services by the same developer, offering different options? Or competitors? Where does one find them?

Or are they alternate names just inserted there to attract Google searches? Is this any more than a proof of concept — if that? OK, now my downloading tab has disappeared, or it has stopped downloading without warning. Data taken from a CMS backup will not have this digital signature.

Easy Access to Archives: In order for a website archive to truly be useful, departments like HR, Legal, and Marketing should be able to access this data fairly easily. If it takes too much time and effort, teams are far less likely to actually make use of it in their day-to-day work.

Gaining access to data hiding in a CMS backup can often be tricky. Live Replay: The closer any archive resembles the look and feel of the original platform, the easier it is to navigate and find what you need.

Metadata: As with digital signatures, having access to the metadata associated with any website record is crucial when it comes to litigation or regulatory edits. And CMS backups do not allow legal teams to easily export a record with all its metadata.

Compliant Data Storage: For regulated industries with specific recordkeeping rules—such as the public sector and financial services—a CMS backup does not meet requirements. Accessibility: In order for a website archive to be truly useful, teams should be able to gain quick and easy access to it. This is rarely the case with a CMS backup; gaining access can take hours and require the involvement of IT.

Hence, it is typically more of a solution for the IT department than it is for Legal or Compliance. Automated Website Capture An automated website archiving service like Pagefreezer allows organizations to keep a complete record of website content.

He has a very successful record in the tech industry, bringing significant market share increases and exponential revenue growth to the companies he has served.

Peter has a passion for building high-performance sales and marketing teams, developing value-based go-to-market strategies, and creating effective brand strategies.