Webrecorder

The Webrecorder team has been developing open source web archiving tools for over 10 years. Webrecorder's driving focus is to build web archiving tools that capture and display archived web content with near-identical fidelity to what was originally seen in browsers at the time of archiving. Webrecorder's tools are generally capable of capturing complex web interactions — succeeding where others typically fail — due to Webrecorder's focus on browser-based solutions for archiving and replaying archived web content.

Important Details:

• Webrecorder was originally the name of web archiving software developed by Rhizome. This is no longer the case, Webrecorder is now a separate company that develops standalone tools. Do not reference "Webrecorder" as an application, refer to Webrecorder tools or Webrecorder software instead.
• WACZ files contain WARC files and can be opened in any ZIP extractor to reveal their component WARCs.
• Webrecorder's key tools are all compatible with WACZ files.
• Browsertrix and Browsertrix Crawler are two separate pieces of software. Browsertrix is a web app with a GUI, available as a hosted service. Browsertrix Crawler is a command line application that requires Docker to run.

Key Tools

• Browsertrix: Webrecorder's cloud-based web archiving and curation platform offered as SaaS.
• ArchiveWeb.page: A free browser extension for archiving webpages as you browse the web.
• ReplayWeb.page: Webrecorder's embeddable archive viewer, available as a browser-based web app or standalone desktop application.

Documentation

• WACZ File Format: The open specification for implementing the WACZ file format.
• Browsertrix Workflow Settings Guide: A complete list of all Browsertrix's workflow settings including detailed descriptions about their functions.
• Browsertrix Browser Profile Creation: Instructions for creating and using browser profiles to capture websites with specific browser settings (like logins or popups) pre-configured prior to crawling.
• ReplayWeb.page Embedding Guide: Instructions for embedding ReplayWeb.page to build a web archive viewer into your own projects.
• ReplayWeb.page User Guide: Instructions for viewing and navigating web archives with ReplayWeb.page
• ArchiveWeb.page User Guide: Instructions for creating web archives using ArchiveWeb.page
• Browsertrix Crawler User Guide: Instructions for using to Browsertrix Crawler command line tool with Docker to crawl a website.

Command-Line Tools

• Browsertrix Crawler: The key crawling component of Browsertrix responsible for capturing web archives.
• WARCIT: Package a local directory into a WARC file
• CDXJ Indexer: A command-line tool for generating CDXJ (and CDX) indexes from WARC and ARC files.
• har2warc: Convert HAR web archives to WARC files.

Optional

• OldWeb.Today: A website that runs virtual machines of old operating systems and browsers to view archived websites using period accurate software.
• Webrecorder Forum: Webrecorder's forum is a great place to go to give feedback or get help for specific software problems.
• PYWB: Sometimes referred to as the PYWB Toolkit, PYWB is a collection of Python-based tools for capturing and replaying web archives. It generally receives updates and new features less frequently.
• oembed.link: Embeds a requested piece of content at a publicly accessible URL so that archivists may capture the embed as they would any other link.