Question: I am trying to copy a password protected website. Web2Disk only copies a little bit of the content and then stops. What could be wrong?

Answer: A common problem when copying password protected content is forgetting to add the “Logout” link to the list of Excluded Pages. This is very important because if you don’t exclude it the crawler will blindly “click” the logout link and end the session prematurely.

You can excluded the Logout URL by first logging in to the site with your regular browser (such as Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome). Locate the logout link and right-click on it. Select “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location” (this will copy the URL of the logout link to the clipboard in Windows). Now run Web2Disk and open the Excluded Pages window. Paste the link you copied into the “Relative Path” field and click “Add” to save the entry in the Excluded Pages list. Click “OK” to close the Excluded Pages window and try crawling the site again.

The second most common problem is a domain name mismatch. When you are logged into the website, ensure that the URL that’s shown in your browser bar matches the Root URL you’ve entered into Web2Disk. Remember, by default Web2Disk will only crawl pages located beneath the Root URL you’ve entered. (This prevents Web2Disk from endlessly crawling the entire web.)