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MakeStaticSite

A set of Bash scripts to generate static snapshots of (dynamic) websites, refine and deploy them using Wget and other open source tools.

Features:

  • A straightforward command line interface
  • A setup script that guides users through the creation of a configuration file through a simple interactive dialogue; manual editing is not required
  • Support for multiple sites, each with custom settings defined in their own configuration file (multiple config files can also be used for any given site).
  • Suitable for batch processes, allowing operations to be scaled up so that any or all of the sites are updated in one process.
  • Support for CMS logins, which paves the way for converting your existing site whilst maintaining the WordPress installation in situ.
  • Runtime options, such as verbosity, to configure the level of output; and whether to archive each build
  • Option of providing a downloadable copy of the entire site as a zip file which can be used offline, e.g., off a memory stick, making your site portable.
  • Local and remote (server) deployment options, including rsync over ssh and Netlify.
  • For WordPress installations, WP-CLI is used to prepare the site for mirroring plus a drop-in search replacement (WP Offline Search plugin) that works offline.
  • Snippets – an experimental facility to tweak any page and provide offline variants using chunks of HTML.
  • Support for custom attributes using post-processing – by creating a list of URLs unaccounted for and then re-running Wget on them
  • W3C standards compliance. Whilst this really depends on the source, pages may be cleaned up by HTML Tidy. The system also generates a sitemap XML and robots.txt file to match the outputted files.