repotting-template 🌱🍯

Template & guide for repotting sites as static copies with Httrack and some Ruby tools on Mac.
Inspired by Repotting Old Digital Humanities Projects: Two Test Cases by Matt Miller.

Prerequisites

• Homebrew
• Httrack (install with $ brew install httrack)
• Html-Tidy (install with $ brew install tidy-html5)
• Ruby >= 2.4 with bundler

Instructions

1. Setup

• Create a new repo from this template. The new repo name should be "<projectname>-repotted"
• Clone the repo to your local machine, cd into it, then run $ bundle install

2. Copy

• Copy the site using httrack. the command is $ httrack --verbose --clean <url> -O docs, where <url> is the full, publicly accessible URL to the website you want to copy. ./docs is where the copied site will go. (Note: do not add trailing slash in URL)

3. Clean up

• Httrack unfortunately adds extra files and unnecessary hierarchies. To clean it up, open the newly generated docs directory and delete hts-cache, blackblue.gif, fade.gif, and index.html.
• Depending on the structure of your "old pot" URL, you'll have a series of hierarchical folders mirroring the structure of the URL. (e.g., www, nyu.edu, projects, etc.) Find the lowermost folder with all the site files and copy them directly into ./src. Then delete the empty directories left over.

4. Check links

• Run $ ruby lib/check-links.rb src. This will flag any broken links within the site (not externally). Totally up to you what to do with this information / whether or not to fix it!

5. Check html

• Run $ ruby lib/check-html.rb src. This will flag any HTML errors within the copied site. If there are no major errors, feel free to skip to Step 7.

6. Tidy html

• Run $ ruby lib/tidy-html.rb src. This will attempt to automatically "tidy" some HTML errors. You can check the HTML again using $ ruby lib/check-html.rb src to see if tidying worked. Again, totally up to you what to do with this information / whether or not to fix it!

7. Finish

• When you're done copying and tidying, rename this README.md file to instructions.md
• Next, fill out the README-template.md and rename it to README.md
• Add, commit, and push your changes (including the site in docs)
• Test the site using github pages by going to settings > github pages and setting the source to main > docs.
• After a minute, go to the live github pages site to test it.
• If everything is good, copy the contents of docs into your "new pot" host, e.g., an NYU web hosting account.
• Et voilà!