Show HN: Webclone.js – A simple tool to clone websites

I needed a lightweight way to archive documentation from a website. wget and similar tools failed to clone the site reliably (missing assets, broken links, etc.), so I ended up building a full website-cloning tool using Node.js + Puppeteer.

Repo: https://github.com/jademsee/webclone

Feedback, issues, and PRs are very welcome.

github.com

・

23 points

・

jadesee

・

4 days ago

11 comments

frankhsu ・ 4 days ago

Really nice tool, Thank you! I had confronted some issues after cloned the repo and installed the node_modules. I'm using node.js v20, when I tried "node webclone.js --help" the terminal catch a error of "Error [ERR_REQUIRE_ESM]: require() of ES Module /Users/fangyexu/Desktop/dev-s/_github/webclone/node_modules/yargs/index.mjs not supported."

Then I just throwed it to my Cursor and it help me solved the issue.

  • jadesee ・ 2 days ago

    By the way, would it be possible to share how the issue was resolved on your end?

  • jadesee ・ 2 days ago

    Thank you for the feedback. I will check it out.

ohans ・ 4 days ago

Looks good! You could push to npm so that running it could be as easy as:

npx webclone URL (no repo cloning required)

Also, FYI, when running the example code

node webclone.js https://www.example.com/

It fails (at least for me) until I either install yt-dlp or ignore videos via:

node webclone.js https://www.example.com/

  • jadesee ・ 2 days ago

    Hello. I have tested this and it indeed looks for yt-dlp at the beginning even though the site is not a video platform. I have logged the issue on GitHub and working on a fix. Thank you for the feedback!

  • jadesee ・ 4 days ago

    Great feedback! Will get this fixed. Thank you.

khiqinsta ・ 4 days ago

can it also clone games? you know these web html games

  • jadesee ・ 4 days ago

    I haven't tried. Would you be able to share some links so I could test?

moralestapia ・ 4 days ago

Hey thanks! This is quite handful, I often do this "manually", lol.

  • jadesee ・ 4 days ago

    Glad you find it useful. Please feel free to share with your friends.