The command is simple and to mirror a website using wget works fantastic. While I was crossing the Williamsburg Bridge in NYC I received a Slack chat from a customer. They wanted to backup some really old WordPress sites and just archive them as simple html files.
You can mirror a website using wget easily. Copy and paste the below into your terminal. If you’re on a mac you can install wget using brew or using your favorite method.
wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites
--no-parent http://example.orgExplanation of the various flags:
• –mirror – Makes (among other things) the download recursive.
• –convert-links – convert all the links (also to stuff like CSS stylesheets) to relative, so it will be suitable for offline viewing.
• –adjust-extension – Adds suitable extensions to filenames (html or css) depending on their content-type.
• –page-requisites – Download things like CSS style-sheets and images required to properly display the page offline.
• –no-parent – When recursing do not ascend to the parent directory. It useful for restricting the download to only a portion of the site.
Alternatively, the command above may be shortened:
wget -mkEpnp http://example.org
wget will create a directory with the website’s name you’re mirroring. Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment. You can also check out my shop for cool tech T-Shirts and Coffee mugs.