RodeWorks

There comes a time when all good things must come to an end — and sometimes that applies to web projects as well. I’ve got a website that utilizes WordPress as its content management system, and the project is over. It no longer needs to be a web 2.0 site, nothing is going to change AND we don’t want to risk that anything will. I don’t want to have to administer the site, keep its WordPress version updated, or have to be on the watch for spam or hackers. I’d be happiest if this archive was in straight html — less to worry about and reasonable assurance that it’ll be readable in the future. In the grand old days of static html this type of thing was easy — just copy the files to an archive directory and move on. But what to do in this new data-driven, dynamic html world?

HTTrack website copier is one solution. I tested it on my site, and it works as expected. The names of the static pages it saves out look a little whacky, but a future viewer won’t really care about that. The important thing is that you can pull up the index page in a browser, click on the links, and have them work — and this does exactly that. None of the functionality works — like the search box — but then you wouldn’t really expect it to. So before making the final archive I’m going through the theme and cleaning off things like search which won’t work, and don’t need to be in the archive.

So I ran it through, I downloaded the files, uploaded them to an archive section, and the new, static, archive site is ready to go. HTTrack is GPL software, offered at no charge. There’s even an interesting looking Firefox add-on built on top of it, which I did not use. I used the full version, and if you’re looking to fix a WordPress site in static html, give this a try!

SpiderZilla :: Firefox Add-ons
HTTrack Website Copier - Offline Browser

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the “mirrored” website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.