18 March, 2021

How to download a website from archive.org

How to download a website from archive.org
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Reading time: 1 min.

This tutorial will show you how to download an entire website from archive.org. This can be useful in case you break your website and you don’t have a backup, or more recently, if the server is destroyed because of a fire.

Download and install ruby

Download this archive and un-zip it:

https://github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader/archive/e6707a9d8bcd42cf921da4aaf5afe77a13fca7cb.zip

Open the extracted folder, then open “bin” folder

Open a terminal window that “bin” folder

Tips: on windows, you can hold Shift then right click => open powershell window here

Run this command:

ruby wayback_machine_downloader http://your-website.com

The program will exit when it’s done downloading your site.

Downloaded websites are saved under “websites” folder.

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Discussion
    new-php's avatar
    new-php
    Hey everyone,
    I recently had a major issue with my website—I accidentally broke it, and to make things worse, I didn’t have a backup. I came across this tutorial on how to download an entire website from archive.org, which was a lifesaver! However, I ran into a problem when trying to set up the required tools.

    I’m using a Debian 12 server, and I needed to *[Install Ruby on Rails on Debian 12](https://docs.vultr.com/how-to-install-ruby-on-rails-on-debian-12)* to get the Wayback Machine Downloader working. I followed the steps to install Ruby, but I kept running into dependency issues. After some research, I found a guide on how to *Install Ruby on Rails on Debian 12* properly, and it finally worked!

    Here’s what I did:
    1. Installed Ruby using rbenv to avoid conflicts with system packages.
    2. Installed Rails and the required gems.
    3. Downloaded and unzipped the Wayback Machine Downloader.
    4. Ran the command `ruby wayback_machine_downloader http://your-website.com` in the terminal.

    It took some time, but the tool successfully downloaded my entire website from archive.org. If anyone else is struggling with this, I highly recommend checking out a guide on how to *Install Ruby on Rails on Debian 12* first—it made the whole process much smoother!
    Join the discussion...
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