07/31/2007 Web Developer

WebSnake can duplicate or mirror a website, including the directory structure. Great for webmasters and web designers to see how a website is setup.

1. Open WebSnake through the Start Menu. By default, the program opens with the Project Wizard (a Windows feature that leads you step-by-step through the process). If you're already in the program, click on the Add button on the main screen or select the Add Project Wizard command in the File menu.

2. Select the second radio button "Snake a mirrored copy of a website including directory structure," then click on the Next button.

3. Type in www.websnake.com in the Starting Address/URL field. Also, give the project a name. Call our project "Websnake Mirror." So, type the words "Websnake Mirror" in the Project Name field, then click on the Next button.

4. The next wizard screen asks if you need a password to access the website. For our example, just click on the Next button to go to the following screen.

5. You must tell WebSnake how deep you want it to snake as well as give tell it when to stop in the event that you're snaking a large website. For expediency, use the arrow buttons to reduce the number of levels from "3" (which is the default) to "1" in the "How many levels do you wish to snake?" field, then click on the Next button. You're not going to be snaking that much so the "Stop project if space left on local drive is less than" field doesn't come into play. And leave the two checkboxes selected.

6.On the next wizard screen, click on the Finish button to conclude the project setup.

7. Name your session. Think of a session as a category of projects, like Entertainment-related or Sports-related. For our example, type in "browsers" in the file name field, the click on the Save button to initiate the snaking process. Note that this step is skipped if you've already created a session and are saving the project into that session.

8. WebSnake will snake a mirror copy of the www.websnake.com website.

9. Double-click on the "index.html" file to open the website in your default browser.

10. Notice that the URL is pointing to your local hard drive.

11. That's it, you're done. You've just performed your first website mirroring snake!