Putting information on the web is supposed to make it more convenient to access, but of course it doesn’t always work out that way. Especially if you’re accessing a site which is incredibly slow, for instance. Or you’re trying to download content which is spread all around the site, like multiple zip files, one each across many pages.

You may not have to put up with these inconveniences, though – not if you’ve a copy of HTTrack to hand, as the program will automatically download the site you specify for easy reference later.

At its simplest, the program really is very easy to use. Just create a new project, point it at your domain URL, and within a few moments HTTrack will be spidering across your target site, detecting every link and downloading all its various pages.

Of course sometimes that might generate rather more traffic than you’d like, so the program also supports various advanced options to help you define exactly what you want to download. You can choose to include some links, for example, and exclude others, while it’s also possible to, say, define specific file types which you’d like to download (PDFs, MP3s, whatever you like).

And if this is still going to be a bulky download task then you can throttle the program by setting its maximum transfer rate, the maximum number of connections it’s able to use, and more, all of which will help to avoid having it gobble up all your bandwidth.

But once you’ve finished you should still be left with the files you’ve specified, and by double-clicking on any HTML pages you’ll be able to view the site offline. It’s all very convenient, and HTTrack makes an excellent addition to your internet toolkit for when regular browsers just aren’t enough.