Can I put my site on a disc?

wellman

I have what may seem like an odd request - I'd like to put my Smugmug site (or the portion that will fit) on a CD or DVD. I don't want just a backup - I'm talking about the full-blown website in a remote and portable package.

I'd like to do this b/c I have some missionary friends in Papua New Guinea who have a computer but no internet access. (Think data over shortwave radio. Yeah.) In my pre-smugmug days, when I ran my own site, I'd burn the files to a disc and mail it off every few months. It was one of our ways of keeping in touch.

Anyway, is this possible through some sort of third-party app? I can't imagine this being something smugmug would have enough demand for to do it themselves. Thanks!

Andy

wellman wrote:

I have what may seem like an odd request - I'd like to put my Smugmug site (or the portion that will fit) on a CD or DVD. I don't want just a backup - I'm talking about the full-blown website in a remote and portable package.

I'd like to do this b/c I have some missionary friends in Papua New Guinea who have a computer but no internet access. (Think data over shortwave radio. Yeah.) In my pre-smugmug days, when I ran my own site, I'd burn the files to a disc and mail it off every few months. It was one of our ways of keeping in touch.

Anyway, is this possible through some sort of third-party app? I can't imagine this being something smugmug would have enough demand for to do it themselves. Thanks!

No, we don't do it (other than image backup which you already know about).

rainforest1155

wellman wrote:

I have what may seem like an odd request - I'd like to put my Smugmug site (or the portion that will fit) on a CD or DVD. I don't want just a backup - I'm talking about the full-blown website in a remote and portable package.

Try GetLeft - I used it a while ago and pulled parts of my smugmug homepage on my harddrive, but I don't know how it performs today with all the fancy new features of smugmug, because it understands only plain HTML, no JavaScript etc. Simply browsing without changing the style should be possible.

Maybe there're also more advanced tools out there to do this, but they might cost money.

Would be great if you could report your results (maybe you find some nice tools on your own) here as a reference for others.

Hope this helps,
Sebastian

EDIT: Be aware that if you've enabled the download of originals in some galleries all tools could try to download these as well. So be careful about the settings you make and test it not with the whole page in the beginning.

wellman

rainforest1155 wrote:

Would be great if you could report your results (maybe you find some nice tools on your own) here as a reference for others.

Will do. Thanks for the link!

cmason

wellman wrote:

Will do. Thanks for the link!

Another option is to use Picasa (free) and simply create a Gift CD. It will create a slide show on CD, and even burn it for you, with whatever pictures you like. Assuming you have those pics handy on your PC. While it is not exactly what you are asking for, and will look nothing like smugmug, it will get the job done and it is very simple and quick.

wellman

Well, I tried an app called WinHTTrack, and it sort of worked. I ended up getting all kind of warnings and errors that made the smug-rific browsing experience I'm used to pretty terrible. I'm thinking the DIY-slideshow-oriented approach will be better (and easier) than trying to cram smugmug onto a disc.

Speaking of that, how about a new smugmug service that takes a gallery (or galleries) with their captions and transfers them to DVD? Might be nice for gifts to Grannies without PC (or Macs).

Anyway, I honestly didn't try too hard, but my goal was to see if it could be easily done. It appears not.

Have a good evening...

rainforest1155

wellman wrote:

Speaking of that, how about a new smugmug service that takes a gallery (or galleries) with their captions and transfers them to DVD? Might be nice for gifts to Grannies without PC (or Macs).

Anyway, I honestly didn't try too hard, but my goal was to see if it could be easily done. It appears not.

Well, I thought that it would bring up problems. But it was worth a try.
Concerning your idea to create an application for this I created another thread in the hack-section, where the guys hang out that have created already a lot of very useful tools.

Let's see what they say. Feel free to add your thoughts there - after all it's your great idea!

Sebastian

wellman

rainforest1155 wrote:

Concerning your idea to create an application for this I created another thread in the hack-section, where the guys hang out that have created already a lot of very useful tools.

Thanks!