wget --random-wait -r -p -e robots=off -U mozilla https://example.com
Absolutely! Let’s walk through what this wget
command does, piece by piece:
🧾 Full Command:
wget --random-wait -r -p -e robots=off -U mozilla https://example.com
🧩 Option Breakdown:
Option | What It Does |
---|---|
--random-wait |
Adds random delays between downloads to mimic human behavior (helps avoid being flagged or blocked). |
-r or --recursive |
Enables recursive download, meaning it follows links and grabs the linked pages too (default depth is 5). |
-p or --page-requisites |
Downloads all files necessary to properly display the page — images, stylesheets, JS, etc. |
-e robots=off |
Tells wget to ignore robots.txt rules — i.e., download even if the site says "don’t crawl this". |
-U mozilla |
Sets the User-Agent string to "mozilla" (pretends to be a browser so the site doesn't block wget). |
https://example.com |
The starting URL for the download. |
🔧 What It Does in Practice:
This command tells wget
to:
-
Start from
https://example.com
. -
Download that page and all assets needed to display it (like images, CSS).
-
Recursively follow links (to other pages on the site).
-
Ignore restrictions in
robots.txt
(potentially unethical/legal issue depending on the site). -
Add random pauses between requests to reduce the chance of getting blocked.
-
Pretend to be a browser instead of a script.
⚠️ Caution:
-
Without limiting the depth (
--level=N
), this can download a lot of pages. -
Ignoring
robots.txt
might go against a site's terms of service. -
To stay within a directory or avoid dynamic pages, you’d need to add more flags (we can tailor that if needed).