How to Copy a Whole Website
You can easily copy a website in order to back up the website or use it as the base for a new website. In both scenarios, the process is essentially the same. Any individual with a very basic knowledge of computers can complete the steps. You should know, though, that many website designs are copyrighted work. If you intend on using a design for your own purposes in the future, make sure you have a right to do so.
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Instructions
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Copy a Site from the Internet
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Open your Internet browser and navigate to the website. You can do this by simply typing in the URL in the navigation bar. You will need to navigate to the home page first, and you may need to navigate to other pages to complete your website copy.
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View the page source. Each browser has a slightly different way of allowing you to do this. For most, you click on View and then, from the drop-down menu, click on "Page Source" or simply "Source." When you click this button, a document will open that has all of the coding for the webpage.
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Copy the web code. Make sure you click CTRL+A (or Select All), because each character is important to saving the website.
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Paste the code into a document in your text-editing program. When you save this document, make sure to save it as a plain-text document. If you save it with rich text formatting, the formatting will override the website coding. Preferably, save the document as a file type matching the programming language used. For example, save an HTML document as .htm.
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Open the document in a web browser. You will see that the site layout and words have all been copied. You may notice certain items, like images and the background, have not been copied. These items are stored on the site's FTP, and you cannot access them through the source code.
Copy a Site from a Host
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Log in to the website File Transfer Protocol. To do this, you will need the username and password to the FTP, and this can only be obtained from the owner of the website or the website host.
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Select a destination for the files. You may want to create a folder on your computer to hold all of the website files. These files can amount to a very large amount of information. Make sure you have a place to store the information prepared on your computer.
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Copy all of the files listed on the website FTP. Select the files and opt to either save, download or copy the files depending on the methods presented to you by the FTP client you are using. Copy the files to the folder you have set up in the previous step. This part can take hours if the website is very large and has a lot of files.
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Do not delete the files from the FTP when you copy them. All of these files need to stay in place for the website to operate properly.
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Check to make sure files have all been copied. The new folder you created should have a file list that matches the FTP file list exactly.
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Tips & Warnings
If you need to make any changes to your website, it is a good idea to save a backup copy to an external file first using this FTP copy method.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit abheften image by Ewe Degiampietro from Fotolia.com
