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Copy Websites and Convert Links in Website Copier
When downloading websites with A1 Website Download, you can choose between different ways to download websites and how internal links are changed.
Control If and How Internal Link Conversion is Done
You can to a high degree control how internal links are converted during website download.
It is even possible to have no link conversion done.
If you choose not to correct links,
you will need to take care of your webserver configuration if you are mirroring the copied website.
The screenshot above shows typical settings for downloading and mirroring a website on the internet.
Note: If you intend to distribute the downloaded website on offline media, e.g. to present it to clients, you would usually enable option Add .HTML file extension to page content URLs. You may also want to experiment enabling option: Convert to relative links for browsing on local disk, but it should not be necessary any longer with most modern Windows versions and/or browsers.
Note: Please understand that URLs (e.g. dynamic URLs with GET "?" parameters) will sometimes be renamed when the URL content is to be stored in a file on a disk. That is because file name requirements in Windows are different than URLs. Files stored on disk have to obey certain file naming conventions.
Note: If you select Convert to relative links for uploading to a HTTP webserver / website, links to directories will sometimes be kept as http://example.com/directory/ instead of pointing to http://example.com/directory/index.html. This is because webservers will know to also serve index.html for requests to its root directory path. This only works when viewed online and not when viewing the website offline locally from the disk.
The screenshot above shows typical settings for downloading and mirroring a website on the internet.
Note: If you intend to distribute the downloaded website on offline media, e.g. to present it to clients, you would usually enable option Add .HTML file extension to page content URLs. You may also want to experiment enabling option: Convert to relative links for browsing on local disk, but it should not be necessary any longer with most modern Windows versions and/or browsers.
Note: Please understand that URLs (e.g. dynamic URLs with GET "?" parameters) will sometimes be renamed when the URL content is to be stored in a file on a disk. That is because file name requirements in Windows are different than URLs. Files stored on disk have to obey certain file naming conventions.
Note: If you select Convert to relative links for uploading to a HTTP webserver / website, links to directories will sometimes be kept as http://example.com/directory/ instead of pointing to http://example.com/directory/index.html. This is because webservers will know to also serve index.html for requests to its root directory path. This only works when viewed online and not when viewing the website offline locally from the disk.
Websites Using Server Side Languages to Output HTML
When A1 Website Download downloads an entire website it
grabs a copy of all visible website elements such as HTML,
images and Javascript. This is similar to e.g. a search engine crawler or an internet browser.
It then fixes URL and link references, so the website can be viewed offline.
This usually works well with most of the website content, images and layout preserved.
However, any server side code, e.g. PHP or ASP, running at the webserver is not copied, only the resulting website output is.
Above means you can:
If you want the original website server-side code and database SQL, you will need to do the following:
However, any server side code, e.g. PHP or ASP, running at the webserver is not copied, only the resulting website output is.
Above means you can:
- Browse the downloaded website offline.
- Upload the downloaded content to a different website address and view it online.
If you want the original website server-side code and database SQL, you will need to do the following:
- To download the actual source code of a website, use a FTP program such as FileZilla.
- To download the actual SQL database of a website, use a website administration tool such as cPanel.
