Say a website is making a disputable or disingenuous claim and you wanted to save a copy of it for future reference, and as a fallback against them deleting the page or the site if someone calls shenanigans….. how would you do that?

I could do a screen grab obvs, but can you save the site and its active links etc?

Theres programs that will take a copy of the rendered html and images (search for website downloader) but if the site has any form of admin backend system that will not be copied or be able to be downloaded via that program. For that you would need access to the sites webhosting control panel and download the sites files and database (for example)

Problem is you could download it and alter the html to say whatever you wanted. In fact using Dev tools you can do that to the live website, for your browser only obviously. Probably the best option you’ve got is a screenshot. Or maybe a picture or video using your phone camera as that’s a lot more effort to alter so if anything ever comes of it the evidence is more believable.

Or get way back to save it for you http://lifehacker.com/manually-archive-web-pages-by-submitting-them-to-the-wa-1580713309

There’s an Android app I use called Offline Browser – it might also be available on Apple.

You point it to a URL and it saves the page. You can also tell it how many links deep you want to save.

I have used it for city guide web pages on my tablet when I know I won’t actually have internet when out and about…

I both downloaded html and took a screen grab when I bought a bike from DFS. Turned out to be prudent when the bike arrived lower than spec

You could use cURL to make a localised backup. However, as mentioned, there would be nothing then stopping you editing those files – it’s unlikely they’ll much use in a legal dispute.

There is the Web Archive, that might have a copy of the site in question:

http://web.archive.org/

screenshotting is better, with desktop in view date, time, url etc. Saving the webpage in my opinion is less convincing than a screenshot