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Best Free Web Site Ripper
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This software category is in need of an editor. If you would like to give something back to the freeware community by taking it over, check out this page for more details. You can then contact us from that page or by clicking here.
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What Is A Website Ripper and Why Do You Need It?
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Did you ever land on a website with many pages and/or lots of content, which you were looking for, but didn't have enough time to look through the site at the time? If so, then website ripper is the software you needed to download the whole site to your computer. Once downloaded you could then browse through the whole site, whenever you wanted, even without an internet connection. The softwares reviewed below were capable of downloading the whole website including the images, style sheets and everything else the site owners uploaded on the server. So, don’t worry about how the site looks when they get downloaded. I hope that the review, below, will help you to choose the right website ripper freeware that matches your requirements. |
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Discussion
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HTTrack is an impressive product that does everything that you could want from a website ripper—download any website to your computer and then browse at your convenience. The entire website is there, the sub-directories, pictures, and internal links. Links to external websites are only active if you have an internet connection. HTTrack is compatible with all Windows versions, and is GPL licensed freeware. WinHTTrack is the Windows release of HTTrack, and WebHTTrack is the Linux release. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system. After a quick install you may start the program and select your language preference. You are then presented with a box to tell the program if you use a proxy for FTP transfers. If you do not use a proxy, just cancel and click next where you can give your project(s) a name and category. The default download folder is C:\My Web Sites so just click next. Now you can paste in a URL for the website you wish to download. If you click on Options this will give a number of choices. These can also be accessed on the top menu through Preferences. Click on next to get to the last screen to make any last options before one last next. Now you can watch HTTrack download the entire website. It might take a while for the program to download the whole site, and is not as easy to use as some other products mentioned in this review. Alternatively there is the free edition of PageNest, which allows you to download and categorize websites, as well as browse them within the programs own viewer. PageNest can also show what new or updated content has been added to an archived website. The commercial Pro version of PageNest, among other things, adds the ability to schedule auto-updates to archived sites. The third program in this category, Local Website Archive, has a free lite edition that only allows you to download web pages and other documents on the web. However, it has good integration with Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer, allowing you to capture a web pages URL directly from the browser. Unlike HTTrack or PageNest, this program has a built-in search facility, which identifies the pages that a word or phrase appears in, and highlights the words in the document. It also has the useful ability to zip up a stored page, so it can be emailed. Another contender in this category is GetLeft, an open-source freeware product that allows you to download entire web sites or single webpages. It can change all the links to ensure that the downloaded site is still functional, can resume downloads if the connection is poor or lost, and can also follow links to external sites i.e. download pages from external sites. However, it only processes the HTML, so it won't process files embedded with JavaScript. QuadSucker/Web is another freeware that I tried to use, but unfortunately I found this software to be unsatisfactory. Most of the functionalities of the original website couldn't be restored by this freeware for offline viewing. But, this freeware provides an easy to use interface for downloading the websites. QSW also gives us four options to select from: Entire Site, Single Page + Images, Single File and Multi-Site Spider. I call this software hardly freeware, as we need to wait a considerable time on each occasion we open this software before use. To avoid this waiting and being disturbed by a popup, which keeps on telling us to do register this software (nagware), we sure need to register this software for some dollars. Besides these popup distractions, QuadSucker is capable of downloading four files at a time, so we could expect a little faster download. Also QuadSucker can support both standard (http) and secure (https) websites. |
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Other software products to be reviewed:
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Developer's homepage is currently not available.
The portable version is available here.
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Editor
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This software category is in need of an editor. If you would like to give something back to the freeware community by taking it over, check out this page for more details. You can then contact us from that page or by clicking here |
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Tags
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Web ripper, website ripper, website backup, save web pages, read web pages offline |
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Comments
which program should i use to save wikipedia on a 2tb (or bigger) hard drive?
First of all, you don't need a 2 Terabyte hard drive to save the whole of the Wikipedia. The whole database of Wikipedia is available to download in two sizes as compressed 7.5 GB version and an uncompressed 30 GB version. Also they provide a torrent download of the whole database in addition to the direct download. So, it is unnecessary to waste some days by downloading the whole website using a web ripper tool, as they weren't fast enough as the normal download.
If you still prefer the web ripper tool then you could use any of the above rippers we reviewed (but believe me, none of them could ensure you the best download experience because we are talking about Wikipedia)and download at your own risk.
There are four more notable software's targeting the peoples who wants offline Wikipedia and I believe they were the best (not used them but saw some reviews) fitting answer to your question. Here comes they are - Wiki Taxi, Zipedia, Wikislice for Windows and Pocket Wikipedia for Windows/Linux.
Here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download you could download the whole Wikipedia database as a direct or torrent download but without any images. For downloading the whole of images from Wikipedia, you could use Wikix, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikix .
Hello
Any of these programs that could also download embeded videos?
videos like videos from youtube or other streaming ones.
Most of the Website rippers are only good for downloading content based sites. Up-to my knowledge, WinWSD WebSite Downloader have an option for downloading videos but mostly they end up in download failure. For downloading videos please try UltraGet Video Downloader.
I think i hav learnt somethng but i was looking for is a software that will download txt files from a site coz i don't think i need to download all 733 txt files.
Anyone know any.?
Thanks in advance.
Do you want to download selective text files? If yes, you can just right click them, and save them. Or, you can use a download manager to download them.
New software for this category :
Fresh WebSuction : http://www.freshwebmaster.com/freshwebsuction.html
From the makers of Fresh Ftp, Fresh Download, Fresh View etc.
Short version:
Scrapbook Plus addon for Firefox is the perfect solution for me.
Long version:
Today, I spent hours redownloading the same website with each of the recommended solutions above, but they all failed for one reason or another. To the Anonymous poster below that recommended Scrapbook for Firefox, thank you! I decided to try the Scrapbook Plus addon after reading more about it.
Here was my criteria for a successful solution:
1. Webpage must be available offline, looking exactly that same as the Online version.
2. Only make the content I visit available Offline.
3. Allow me to clear my browser cache, while retaining the offline version.
4. Easily move the Offline pages I create on my workstation, to my laptop.
5. Streamlined capture process. Capturing pages must not add too much overhead over normal web browsing.
Scrapbook does all of that by design:
1. It works that way by design.
2. It works that way by design.
3. It works that way by design.
4. Allows me to specify where data must be saved. Then I simply copy that folder to the equivalent location on my laptop, and I'm done.
5. Allows me to capture all open tabs with one option "Capture All Tabs".
Today has been a major frustration, trying to find a solution that works, but thanks to a comment from two years ago, I found my perfect solution.
I agree, scrapbook plus works great! Since I'm a regular Firefox user, this works great for me. I had been using scrapbook, scrapbook + is better though.
Just a suggestion, (it probably doesn't fit in the this category :D) there is a similar software that can rip web sites, named MM3 WebAssisstant Private Edition 2009, but only the pages you actually visited. It advantages are easy, cross-platform, and no necessary advanced settings. Though, it disadvantages are restricted freeware, and also saves ads, in addition, when you have visited many sites, you will find the library to be cluttered, since filtering is not included in the private edition. (in another word, a mess :<).
http://www.proxy-offline-browser.com/
Because of that, if you have a link to a freeware that can do the same, please help.
httrack was a quick setup and run for me. Lots of advanced features which I may use in the future but didn't need to do a basic rip, and best of all free with no virii or spyware. Thanks!
Httrack Pagenest are powerful, but very difficult to configure and time consumed.
I also enjoy Backstreet Browser than other download manager.
Also Orbit.... is a remarkedly freeware too, easy to use and many features.
Blackstreet browser is another top of the download manager.
Very fast, user friendly, and Totally free.
Its Backstreet... not Blackstreet :D. Thanks for the suggestion :).
http://www.spadixbd.com/backstreet/
Very good... i found problems with httrack in .zip and .pdf files, but backstreet it's beautifull
PageNest has no web site, it only offers to start downloading. Even if I Google PageNest, and click on www[dot]pagenest[dot]com, it only brings up the start down load option.
Has anyone tried this? Is it safe to download?
Moderators comment: Direct links to download files are not permitted
There is no free lunch in the world--free means "string attached". You'll pay in other ways. I don't trust nor use these "freeware".
I have been using freeware for many years. Most of the freeware was suggested and tested by Gizmo prior to my download. Once in awhile I have uninstalled a freeware program, mostly because they were too advanced for me to learn easily.
I have had problems with malware when downloading from other sites. I no longer download any freeware that has not been tested and approved by Gizmo first.
I am just curious as to why you are on this site, Gizmo is a freeware site. Aren't you just wasting your time?
Some of the best things in life are free, and some of the best software is freeware. Freeware = Fully functional software for an unlimited time at no cost, monetary or otherwise. The software author may restrict rights to copy, distribute, and/or make derivative works of it. The software license may impose restrictions such as "free for personal, non-commercial use". In the end, as with all software, it's best to not trust any of it, use tested software such as with Gizmo, and read the EULA.
I don't trust nor do I use people who speak in multiple cliches. Actually, if you're smart about selecting the right freeware, you will often find the opensource community have developed better, faster, and more focused apps than corporations that need to release new versions with new 'features' to justify new releases and compete with other products doing the same thing. 7zip vs. WinZip is a perfect example of this. Gizmo is a terrific resource to find the best freeware resources. Nota Bene: Freeware is often better than shareware, which often is a teaser product.
I tried Local Website Archive on three news stories, and it did nothing. I tried on a regular non-news web site and it does nothing. In every case it says it cannot find a file or path or something. I probably just need to read the help file. Oh, wait, there ARE no Help Files! If Local Website Archive will not do anything, why is it listed, to waste our time? Okay, that was a little harsh, as I find this web site very helpful. But please remove this worthless program and tell the producer why.
If the software did not work for you, try other options which are listed here. The software obviously does work, that's why its listed here on the article. For Local Website Archive, in the cons its clearly written that it is able to save only single web pages... maybe that's the reason it does not seem to work. There are better options... try them... rather than saying the article wasted your time. Have some appreciation for the editors here who provide you with the choices and the review.
I've got Getleft and I cannot find where in hell it does put the files it grabs! Never saw a software so misterious of what it actually did. No hint on the help files. I think I'm geting crazy.
I've tried also Web Ripper but it does not grab the html, only embedded files.
Next I've used WinWSD WebSite Downloader and it worked OK, grabbing all the html I wanted.
These products don't seem to work on blogs - has anyone else tried ripping blogs?
need to help Download PHP files from other site!!! can download???
This kind of request can only be dealt with effectively in the forum. Please register and re-post there.
Please tell me what you want to do and maybe I can help.
pohle
I've never been able to get HTTRack to do what I want (namely, to download a complete copy of a blog but not download any of the many sites that the blog links to).
check out backstreet browser... It's one of my favorite sit backup tools.
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