Thank you for volunteering to capture Ukrainian cultural heritage sites using the WebRecorder browser plugin! Here’s a guide to using it.

Setup

Install the Chrome plugin. You should also “pin” the extension to your browser to make sure the WebRecorder plugin is always visible.

Claiming a site

On the SUCHO spreadsheet (linked in Slack), go to the WebRecorder plugin tab

Site review

Visit the site before you start recording it. Click around to get a sense of what’s there and how it works. Some sites have complex audio or video elements. When you’re just checking out the site on your own, it may help to use something like the Google Translate browser extension to understand what’s going on, but be sure to disable it when you actually do the web recording so it doesn’t machine-translate everything as you go

Setting up the site recording

When you’re ready to record, click the WebRecorder icon in your browser. You’ll see an option Record To:; click on the drop-down arrow, then choose + Create New Archive. Use the name of the website as the name of the archive. In most cases, you should check the “Start with Autopilot” box, which will automatically scroll to the bottom of each page.

Recording the site

Click the Start button in the web recorder plugin. The page will reload and then the recording will start. You may see a bar across the top of the page saying that “WebRecorder ArchiveWeb.page” started debugging this browser. You’ll see the amount of data captured in the plugin interface, and if you’re using autopilot, it will automatically scroll.

Once you see at the top of the plugin “Recording: Idle, Continue Browsing”, click on one of the links on the home page. The auto-pilot will once again scroll down and capture things until you see “Recording: Idle, Continue Browsing”.

Work through the pages of the site, one by one, until you’ve captured everything. If you’re not able to capture everything, make note of which section(s) of the site you’ve captured so someone else can work on the rest.

Downloading the archive file

Once you’ve stopped the recording, click on the Browse Archive link in the browser plugin. It may take a minute or two for that page to load.

In the left sidebar, hit the down arrow next to Download, and choose Download All as WACZ. Save that file to your computer.

Uploading the web archive file

Go to the WACZ upload form. Enter the metadata and upload the WACZ file that you just downloaded.