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   Judeau (EatTheRich) (judeau@mas.to)'s status on Friday, 07-Nov-2025 03:45:52 JST Judeau (EatTheRich)

   There is an old website that I really want to preserve and archive a section of. Basically like how the Wayback machine does.

   I would really like to be able to essentially browse the website offline on my computer.

   Also, if it does not increase complexity, i would like to retain all of the downloadable links and files as well.

   Is there a program or a simple way to go about this? Any help would be appreciated.

   #AskFedi #AskMastodon #archive

   • Embed this notice
     Peter Krefting (nafmo@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Friday, 07-Nov-2025 03:45:52 JST Peter Krefting

     in reply to

     @Judeau If it is a simple static site, GNU Wget has a recursive download mode which can also convert links for offline browsing.

   • Embed this notice
     Peter Krefting (nafmo@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Friday, 07-Nov-2025 21:22:57 JST Peter Krefting

     in reply to

     • Nazo

     @nazokiyoubinbou @Judeau There is a --span-hosts options that seems to be there to download things from other servers as well; I haven't used Wget in this mode in several years, so I don't know how well it works, though.

   • Embed this notice
     Nazo (nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social)'s status on Friday, 07-Nov-2025 21:22:58 JST Nazo

     in reply to

     • Peter Krefting

     @Judeau @nafmo Will this grab external resources though?

     A lot of sites may directly block recursive activity (falsely — or not depending on how you look at it — determining it to be bot activity.) You'll want to, at the very least, add --random-wait in the commandline so it looks less obviously bot-like (and hits the server less hard anyway.)

     Are there a lot of pages? One thing I'm enjoying is the "SingleFile HTML" plugin to save a page into a single .html file instead of a file + directory with broken resources. However, this would give you individual pages, not the equivalent of a functioning site.

     I think there are actually tools specifically designed for archiving sites though. Stuff more directly designed to handle external resources and all. Sadly I can't remember them...

   • Embed this notice
     Judeau (EatTheRich) (judeau@mas.to)'s status on Friday, 07-Nov-2025 21:23:11 JST Judeau (EatTheRich)

     in reply to

     • Peter Krefting

     @nafmo Thanks for the tip. I have only messed around with Wget a few times and it's been many years ago.

     I used it for grabbing files off an FTP like site. I imagine a website might be a bit more complicated for me, but I will definitely take a look at it.

     Thanks again!