There are times when you want to have a copy of your site (the frontend / user side). GNU Wget has been around a long time, but in my opinion, it’s still a great tool to backup / mirror websites.

Wget has many options and parameters, of which I won’t even scratch the surface, but below are the simple steps to get Wget setup and running on Windows and OSX machines. Wget is a command line utility, so it might appear overwhelming, but don’t worry, it’s cake!

Windows steps:

Step 1. Download / install Wget. Visit http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm and choose to download the Setup labeled “Complete package, except sources.”

Step 2. After installation is finished, open a command prompt (cmd.exe).

Step 3. Go to your GNU application folder (on 64 bit it’s in C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin, on 32 bit, it’s probably in C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin).

Step 4. To test if wget is installed correctly, run “wget -V“. It should return the current version and some credit. If not, revisit previous steps.

Step 5. To download / mirror a site, run  wget -e robots=off -r -l 0 -P “c:\\temp” http://www.chrisbitting.com – replacing “c:\temp” with the folder you want the site files to download to and “chrisbitting.com” with your site address.

 

You should now see the command prompt update with the progress – depending on the size of your site – it may take some time to download everything. After it’s finished, your directory should contact a mirror of your site, including html, css, images, etc.

 

Apple OS X steps:

Step 1. Open a blank terminal.

Step 2. Install homebrew by running:

ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)”

Step 3. After installing brew (and entering your password), run:

brew doctor

Step 4. Now install Wget using:

brew install wget

Step 5. When installation finishes, run “wget -V” to ensure Wget installed correctly. It should return the current version and some credit. If not, revisit previous steps.

Step 6. To download / mirror a site, run  wget -e robots=off -r -l 0 -P “/temp” http://www.chrisbitting.com – replacing “/temp” with the folder you want the site files to download to and “chrisbitting.com” with your site address.

You should now see the terminal update with the progress – depending on the size of your site – it may take some time to download everything. After it’s finished, your folder should contact a mirror of your site, including html, css, images, etc.

To see the multitude of options Wget provides, run “wget –help“. Happy downloading!