Web Archiving Integration Layer (WAIL)

What Is It?

Web Archiving Integration Layer (WAIL) is a desktop application that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) atop multiple pre-configured web archiving tools. WAIL acts as an easy way for anyone to preserve and replay web pages.

WAIL includes Heritrix 3.2.0 for web crawling and OpenWayback 2.4.0 for replaying web archives. Both these tools and others are accessible from an easy-to-use, native system interface.

WAIL is written in Python and compiled to a native application using PyInstaller.

Simple, Intuitive Interface

Screenshot depicting the 'basic' interface of WAIL

Screenshot depicting the 'advanced' interface of WAIL

One-Click Archiving

Screenshot depicting cnn.com being loaded into the basic WAIL interface. — "Archive Now!" button sets up crawl, initiates crawl and puts archive file in correct location to be indexed. Wayback consumption can be checked with "Check Archive Status" button.

Wayback columned interface showing that an archived instance has been created from cnn.com. — Once indexed, "View Archive" buttons shows all archives for URL in local Wayback.

CNN.com displayed in local Wayback. — Selecting the date in local Wayback displays the preserved webpage.

Usage

macOS
1. Download and mount the DMG
2. Drag the WAIL icon from the disk image to the /Applications directory (thus creating /Applications/WAIL.app)
3. Launch WAIL.app
Windows (7+)
1. Download and unzip the file
2. Drag the WAIL folder to your C:\ drive (thus creating C:\WAIL\)
3. Launch WAIL.exe

Download (changes)

License

All tools aggregated in this software maintain their respective licenses. WAIL is licensed under MIT.

WAIL's source is available on GitHub.

Send all questions, comments, and bug reports to Mat Kelly.