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Join our discord channel, or Facebook group RetroWeb User Group. Ask one of the admins to help you get started.
The standard workflow is as follows:
Q: What if a recovered site is broken?
A: This depends on a few factors. You can fix some problems on a site manually, and missing graphics can be reconstructed. Sometimes you may find an alternative resource on archive.org, in which case you can use the Upload URL feature in the File Manager. Your main focus should be on the start page (index.html), and at least one sub page. If the site is too broken, and you cannot reconstruct the start page, we recommend you delete the site and find an alternative date with less broken links or images.
Q: How do I know if my job is failed?
A: You can view running jobs in the control panel, and looking at your jobs logs will usually indicate a failure. or if you notice your website started archiving, but you put in the wrong target date, you can delete a running job
Q: In the logs, it looks like archiving has slowed down. Is it stuck?
A: Toward the end of an archival process, the archiver goes through a lot of files trying to find any files that it may have missed. This is probably what you are seeing. Give it time - it will complete.
Q: I cannot access the web site I just crawled on the development server. The job is Complete, but I'm always getting a 500 server error!
A: The development server expects exact addresses. “www.site.com” is different than “site.com”. So make sure you are accessing the site with the URL you crawled. In other words, if you crawled “www.site.com”, then you will access the site as “www.site.com”. If you crawled “site.com”, then you will access the site with “site.com”. Only after publishing, the redirects will be added, so “site.com” will go to the primary site “www.site.com” and vice versa.
Q: Can I capture specific URL's or files?
A: While this feature is planned to be added in the future, it is not currently available. If you need to add files to an existing site, you can upload them through the file manager, or use the Upload URL in the file manager to upload a link to a working file.
Q: I would like to back up the site I crawled. Is that possible?
A: Yes, you can always back up your site, even after you fix and edit it. Just log on to the Contributor Panel, go to the File Manager of the your website using the Edit button, select all files, and click on the ZIP or TAR buttons to create archives of the selected files. You can then download the archive to your computer.