I received this ad this morning "This new, powerful, Dreamweaver extension from WebAssist brings the Web to you for you to explore whenever you like. WA Site Import imports any Web site - static or dynamic - and recreates the site with all the images, SWFs, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript intact. Explore your favorite site's structure, page layout and design with the click of the mouse - and WA Site Import. - Imports any site – or any portion of any site – you can find on the Web. - Converts dynamic pages to linked static pages automatically, rewriting links and file names as needed. - Stores all dependent files , including images, Flash movies, along with external CSS and JavaScript files. " Maybe this is old news, but am I correct in thinking this tool would let me go to any website, copy the whole site, run a few global search and replaces to change the domain name, and then upload to a new site and claim it was mine? It looks like the only thing left that might identify the source of the content would be watermarks on the images. So, would it really be this easy to steal a site, and is there anything I can do to prevent it?
Yes, with the right tools everybody can steal your site in just a few minutes. No, there is nothing you can do against theft (except using flash for everything). Ben
not alot, but the likelyhood, is that there are bits you will want to change (inside the swf maybe). Probably not actually worth the time and effort + your site will probably alsoe be regarded as dup. content, there have been ways to steal whole sites for years. This just seems more complete. Even swfs (flash) is completely breakable/ reversible. I dont think there is any way to secure your site, that I know of and no need usually.
You can also do this now with Frontpage. You can go to any site and download it into frontpage. So this is really nothing new for software.
Yea, there are flash decompilers, they are pretty cool, like for that matrix site, where you had to enter codes to unlock extra stuff. But wget will grab a site and convert the links just like that. I remember an old one, called webwhacker or something like that, back from when I was in high school. =)
Look for a program called surf offline, it is what we lovingly refer to as digital rape....it takes everything, and I do mean everything
It really sucks, I set up my website and a few weeks later I found one which shared the majority of my coding. Is there any legal way you can protect your content? i.e. can you take legal action against those that rip your site?
If it is a dynamic site using PHP or similar your underlying code and database will should be yours and safe. Your HTML content can be stolen.
That's no different than HTTrack. I use it frequently internally. I create all of our sites using ASP. For some of our international domains, the web servers do not support ASP so I use HTTrack to copy the entire site from the development server and then copy it to the foreign server. It works great but it can also be used to completely copy any site out there unless you block it by looking at the headers and prevent the pages from being pulled.
Actually. the programs just run through your database and create a static page for each set of values I just bought a MySQL site and it was lots easier to pull all the pages out this way than figure out how to acutally transfer the database.
mhdoc, please look for a program called phpMyAdmin in your server-adminstrator. Using that program you can export your mySql database. Databases were created to make life much easier and I cannot imaging someone doing cut/paste. If you run into problems with phpMyAdmin you can PM me.
sadcox66 Thanks for the kind offer. Where I have problems is loading the export to a new server. I will have to figure it out someday, but for a small (120) page site where I wanted to preserve the existing pages but don't plan to maintain them, cut and paste was more efficient.
lol you beat me to it...I been using it for years. Works great to make an entire static html site. Yes it can also be used to rip a site..no matter HOW big it is. I have resorted to using copyscape.com to protect some of my sites. Seems to help.