FindSoftware

MakeStaticSite

Command-line tool written in Bash that crawls a website with Wget and generates a static copy of it for deployment.

MakeStaticSite is a set of Bash scripts that crawls an existing website with GNU Wget and writes a static copy of it. The copy contains plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript and no server-side scripting or databases, and the scripts can deploy it to Netlify or over rsync. The sites it converts are typically dynamic ones, such as WordPress, and it can also work from sites archived by the Wayback Machine. Paul Trafford created the project, which is licensed under the AGPL.

Worth knowing

The output is a snapshot. The tool does not run JavaScript, so comments, discussions and surveys lose their interactivity, and the output is not an exact mirror of the original site. The scripts run on a computer the user controls, typically one at home or at work.

Identity

Status
Active
Maintainer
Paul Trafford4
Maintained by
Individual
First release
20235

Rendering and deploy

Runs as
Static files, Dev only1
Rendering
Static output1
Install with
download the zip or tar.gz archive, extract it, make the scripts executable3

Releases

Current major version
Pre-1.06

Adoption

GitHub stars
142
Contributors
17

Why these figures do not compare

Sources

  1. 2026-10-23: links, License model, Runs as, Rendering
    makestaticsite.sh/
  2. 2026-10-23: links, License, GitHub stars
    api.github.com/repos/paultraf/makestaticsite
  3. 2026-10-23: links, Install with
    makestaticsite.sh/getting-started/installing/
  4. 2026-10-23: Maintainer, Categories
    makestaticsite.sh/about/
  5. 2026-10-23: First release
    api.github.com/repos/paultraf/makestaticsite/releases
  6. 2026-10-23: Current major version
    makestaticsite.sh/developers/current-status/
  7. 2026-10-23: Contributors
    api.github.com/repos/paultraf/makestaticsite/contributors?per_page=100

Last reviewed · Listed since Edit on GitHubThis page as markdownas JSON