Make your web-site downloadable
date: 2021-03-07 02:54
It is my incomplete thoughts about thing that I have called "Make web-site downloadable by design".
In short, all what it means is adding "Download" link to your site. By going throuhg this link, user should be able to download the whole web-site and to use this site offline by viewing it from a local filesystem.
After definition of this "feature", let me talk about some details.
Why
Why making your site downloadable, if:
- User always can read(view) it online
- More advanced users can download it with help of special instruments(wget, curl, browser add-ons for site cloning)
The explanation for the first item is short - you can not guarantee that your site can be always viewed online - what if you will stop paying for a domain name or hosting, or your server will shut down? Or maybe user himself will be cut from the internet?
The explanation for the second item is more philosophical than technical. By adding explict way to download your site, you tell your users that you are ready to give them your content, you do not hide it. Also, not all users know how to download a web-site(do you know all flags that are neccesary for perfoming successful site cloning in wget?)
How
There are some tips that help users to view web-site offline.
Make all links relateve if it is possible
Of course it does not refer to links to external resources.
Organize the structure of site in a usable form
Directory's structure should be understandable by user if he will explore the site via file manager or orher software that is not a browser.
For example, text content may be viewed from Vim or Emacs, and their features for opening files by their path in a filesystem can be used(if links are relative).
The form of offline content is not always must be sets of html files, images and css. It can be in any form - pdf, text files, images(maybe the site that you download is image gallery? In this case it is not neccesary to provide html interface for viewing them(but certainly it may be provided!)).
For example, this site is generated from files in gemini format. So, when you will download it, you will find that the archive contains only gemini files and images.
As gemini markup is very readable, it should not to be a problem to read all text information. The site has little multimedia content, so it is not a main part(but later I should add html version too, of course).
Make download easy
User clicks on a link and download should start. Do not use rarely usable archive types, do not encrypt your files - it will not has any reasons.
P.S.
That is all for this topic. Sorry for broken English, sorry for mistakes. Also, you can download this site by going through this link:
/posts/