Generating static HTML-Pages from Joomla/Mambo

    Because some seem interested, I try to explain what you have to do when you want to generate static HTML-Pages out of your Joomla/Mambo-Site using HTTrack. (This is no true tutorial though)

     1. check your site 
    First of all you should look at your site to make sure that it would work offline.
    The main reason why a site is hardly able to work offline is the present of forms (with the exception of a javascript or mailto-target). All other kind of forms will not work (e.g. login).
     
     2. get HTTrack 
    Download HTTrack
     
     3. robots.txt 
    The root of your web site usually contains a robots.txt, this will prevent search engines and by default also HTTrack from downloading some of the files. So you have the choice between removing all disallows or changing the option in HTTrack (in WinHTTrack you will find it under Spider, unfortunatelly this setting is not read when you redo it).
     
     4. consider SEF (if you haven't yet) 
    SEF URLs (Search Engine Friendly URLs) look much better, so I suggest you are using one (so you don't have meaningless numerated index-files only).
    I am using 404 SEF (thanks for that one), which I slightly hacked to make my "template chooser" work as a subdirectory.
     
     5. use HTTrack 
    Because I use WinHTTrack I will explain what I see there, might be different on other ports.
    First of all create a new project etc. (see documentation of HTTrack). Add the root URL of your site to the URL-List. If not all sub-urls are linked somehow add the others too (this is less likely actually).
    Open the settings and make sure you do not exclude any file inside your domain, and review all other settings.
    When you are done start the process.
     
     6. check the result 
    The best is to clear the browsers cache and make sure you are not able to connect to the original site anymore (e.g. disconnect from the internet or stop Apache).
    Open the index.html of your generated local copy. If there are any problems review step 5.
     
     7. automatically updating a local copy (optional) 
    If you do this more often you may want to update it using a batch or shell file:
    httrack --path <local path> --update
    (this will use the last settings used executing WinHTTrack, using save settings only will not work though)
     
     8. shrink the size (optional) 
    If you want to save space you may want to shrink the size of the generated files, this can also be used to make it less readable.
    I use my own Web File Shrinker of course but there are others out there too. So I post my batch file to do this:
    @ECHO OFF
set sourcedir=<your unshrinked path>
set targetdir=<your output path>
set options=de.prj /nocredits /sourcedir=%sourcedir% /targetdir=%targetdir% /hideskipped
echo sourcedir=%sourcedir%
echo targetdir=%targetdir%
xcopy %sourcedir%\*.* %targetdir%\ /s /D /Y /EXCLUDE:_xcopy_exclude.lst
java -jar webfileshrinker.jar %options%

    I have two additional files. de.prj containing files to add, e.g.: 
    *.*

    The other is _xcopy_exclude.lst containing files I don't want to replace because my web file shrinker will check the date: 
    .html
.css
.js