How to Use HTTrack

Last Updated: October 16, 2019 Tested

WinHTTrack is a free and open source Web crawler and offline browser, developed by Xavier Roche and licensed under the GNU General Public License. It allows one to download World Wide Web sites from the Internet to a local computer. By default, HTTrack arranges the downloaded site by the original site's relative link-structure. The downloaded (or "mirrored") website can be browsed by opening a page of the site in a browser.

Steps

1
Type httrack
2
Choose a project name (this will be the name of the folder containing the project). This can include multiple websites.

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3
Optionally enter a base path (the default will store the project in a websites directory in your home directory).
4
Enter the URL(s) of the websites you want to mirror (separated by commas or spaces).
5
Choose an action by typing its number.
- Mirror website
- Mirror website with wizard
- Just get files indicated
- Mirror all links in URLs
- Test links in URLs
- Quit
6
Optionally enter a proxy.
7
Optionally define wildcards.
8
Optionally define additional options, such as recurse level.
9
Confirm you are ready to launch the mirror.
10
Congratulations, it will now begin mirroring - be patient until it reports the mirroring as completed!

Community Q&A

Question

Can I use HTTrack to copy all of the code on a website? Also, can I use this code to develop on my own site?

Ollie Potterton

Community Answer

It depends. If you're planning to rip the website from a forum or from big websites, those websites depend on scripts located outside of the website, so the code is only compatible with that website. I suppose if it's a small website and doesn't depend on a database, then that might work.