Site Grabbing Software

[Phil]

Am going to shift the old school eds server; www.eds.gre.ac.uk from IIS/Access to Apache/MySql. I'd like to keep the old site running for a while, but there's a lot of database driven pages on there and PHP-Access stuff won't work any more. What I though I could do is just do a site grab of the old site, to create loads of static pages, then leave that up. Search forms won't work, but I can live with that.

Anyone know of some good - and preferably free - site grabbing software; so I can do a site "snapshot" while it's IIS, then switch to Apache, and have that deal out the snapshotted static pages. Basically it needs to grab all those database driven pages then export them all - links and all.

[David]

Phil, I've used Download Studio (http://www.conceiva.com/products/downloadstudio/default.asp) in the past and it works quite well. Not sure if I tried it on a dynamic site but it's worth a try. There is a 15 day full-featured trial version so you could just try it.

One of my CADTutor forum users has recommended Net Snippets (http://www.netsnippets.com/) although I'ne never tried it. There is a 30 day trial version of the Pro version or a free stripped down version.

[Phil]

Thanks for Download studio. I tried a Mac one - SiteSucker - but it made right mess of my dynamic pages. Download studio got about 90% of them right - it follows every link then generates an html file for all possible pages, and updates links. So a link to a dynamic page results in that dynamic page getting static-ised then linked to in the site copy. Doesn't do javascripted images (rollover heavy pages will need work) and a few other ones got mangled. I'm almost there though. The thing is, that site's been used for loads of different things for years now, I doubt if i'll ever get round to checking them all.

As well as changing from ASP&PHP4/Access/IIS to PHP5/MySql/Apache i'm also changing the URL to digitalstudio.gre.ac.uk. At the moment i've still got both these addresses pointing to the same machine. There's a redirecting URL that detects whether the user has typed "digitalstudio.gre.ac.uk" or "www.eds.gre.ac.uk" and then moves them there. Its pretty horrible but the only way to maintain - and persist - all those subsites; www.eds.gre.ac.uk/exhibition2005 still exists, and digitalstudio.gre.ac.uk/exhibition2005 works as well, but www.eds.gre.ac.uk goes to the static version of the old site and digitalstudio.gre.ac.uk goes to the new dynamic Mambo one (which is nowhere near ready, naturally).

phew.