Help:Downloading pages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This is a copy of the master help page at Meta. Do not edit this copy. Edits will be lost in the next update from the master page. See below for more information. |
Contents |
Downloading a MediaWiki page
w:Webpage#Saving_a_web_page shows the possibilities for saving a local copy of a webpage. Alternatively (or in addition) one can copy the wikitext, i.e. the text in the edit box (the source code within the database).
Information in the webpage but not in the wikitext:
- images
- content of templates referred to
- values of variables
- existence at the time of saving of linked internal pages
- date and time of the last edit before saving
- in the Image namespace (Image description pages): the image itself, the image history and the list of pages linking to the image
- in the Category namespace: the lists of subcategories and pages in the category.
Information in the wikitext but not in the webpage:
- comments (even though HTML also allows comments)
See also XML export, MediaWiki architecture.
Downloading some linked pages
When saving a local copy of some MediaWiki pages, note the following.
A link to e.g. the train article in Wikipedia is given in the HTML-code as /wiki/Train . This refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train . Depending on your browser settings the former may be changed into the latter when saving the page. To avoid this, apply View Source and save that.
Put the copy in folder C:\wiki (another drive letter is also possible, but wiki should not be a subfolder) and do not use any file name extension. This way the links work. Inconvenient is that you can not open a file in a folder listing by clicking on it, because of the lack of a file name extension.
A problem with saving the source code is that images are not saved automatically with the page. Saving them separately in a place corresponding to the HTML code is cumbersome, e.g. the first image of the train article would have to be C:/upload/thumb/c/c2/250px-Tile_Hill_train_550.jpg
If the images are more important than the mutual links, then use the browser option to save the webpage with images.
Of course variations are possible by changing the HTML-code oneself, e.g. changing http://en.wikipedia.org to C: and/or adding the file name extension .htm .
On some sites outside Wikimedia, instead of "\wiki" another folder has to be used, see Help:URL.
When downloading pages from different sites to the same folder \wiki on the same drive, note that a page name can only be used once.
See also
| edit |
Wikipedia-specific help
None.
This page is a copy of the master help page at Meta (for general help information all Wikimedia projects can use), with two Wikipedia-specific templates inserted. To update the main text, edit the master help page for all projects at m:Help:Downloading pages. For Wikipedia-specific issues, use Template:Ph:Downloading pages (the extra text at the bottom of this page) or Template:Phh:Downloading pages for a Wikipedia-specific lead (text appears at the top of this page). You are welcome to replace the full wikitext of this page with that of the master page at Meta at any time. To view this page in other languages see the master page at Meta.
