How do you archive an entire website for offline viewing?

Question

We actually have burned static/archived copies of our asp.net websites for customers many times. We have used WebZip until now but we have had endless problems with crashes, do

Answer 1

I just use: wget -m <url>.

Answer 2

In Windows, you can look at HTTrack. It's very configurable allowing you to set the speed of the downloads. But you can just point it at a website and run it too with no configuration at all.

In my experience it's been a really good tool and works well. Some of the things I like about HTTrack are:

• Open Source license
• Resumes stopped downloads
• Can update an existing archive
• You can configure it to be non-aggressive when it downloads so it doesn't waste your bandwidth and the bandwidth of the site.

Answer 3

If your customers are archiving for compliance issues, you want to ensure that the content can be authenticated. The options listed are fine for simple viewing, but they aren't legally admissible. In that case, you're looking for timestamps and digital signatures. Much more complicated if you're doing it yourself. I'd suggest a service such as PageFreezer.

Answer 4

You could use wget:

wget -m -k -K -E http://url/of/web/site

Answer 5

I've been using HTTrack for several years now. It handles all of the inter-page linking, etc. just fine. My only complaint is that I haven't found a good way to keep it limited to a sub-site very well. For instance, if there is a site www.foo.com/steve that I want to archive, it will likely follow links to www.foo.com/rowe and archive that too. Otherwise it's great. Highly configurable and reliable.

Answer 6

I use Blue Crab on OSX and WebCopier on Windows.