But what about those sites not offering ZIP-files and also not using these hampering strategies as described? Well, there are some nice little nifty tools around named "spiders" that might be able to do the job all alone, mostly just needing a starting adress and the password - then it takes some time but the result is the site's content on your harddrive whithout you lifting a finger. There are different kinds of such programs around, e.g. MisterPix, an older picture downloading tool which only tries to download specified content (pictures, movies, text-files etc.) but fails when sites are using Java or even PHP. Another example of the same strategy is Picaloader which can handle Java and very often manages with PHP or special password-entry pages. Different from these is Pagesucker, which tries to establish an exact working (!) copy of the downloaded site on your harddrive. It's obvious that this normally won't work with dynamically created structures of websites using databases and creating all web-code on demand. In fact you have to try out what works. Just note that a tool like "Get Right" is not a spider of this type - the difference is it can't analyze the target site and find out by itself what content is there.
Before crying happily about what I just told you and thinking this might be a solution to all of your problems you again should try to understand the webmasters' point of view: Spiders can cause a high load on websites increasing the load on the server for other users. Furthermore if you "do" a site with a spider you might be able to shorten your subscription, which the webmaster also won't like. On the other hand just looking at myself, successful use of spiders has had the effect that I subscribed to more sites than I would have done without a spider and thus spent more money there.
Nevertheless you should be aware of the webmasters' attitude towards spiders, which is something between strictly banning and overlooking it if the usage ain't too hard. There are some sites around where you can read "spiders strictly forbidden". That is not subject of discussion - take it as a fact. I consider this fair and acceptable as long as members are made aware of it on the site. Do not expect it to be just words - tools like the already mentioned Pennywize can clearly recognize the very typical traces of a spider and block them out very fast. If you are unlucky, you might even loose your subscription - I experienced that too. Even if there is nothing written about spiders, it's never clear whether the usage of such a tool is possible. It's a matter of webdesign, which is not something you can check from outside the members area and sites like the already mentioned "Realswingers" or "Rachel Aziani" are done in a way so that no spider can handle them - it simply does not find anything.
But even if the spider works and seems to be successful it is a risky situation: You very often do not know where the security download limit in Megabytes for a site is - but you should be aware that most sites have this! A little hint for this might be the presence of movies - if there are big movies around (most times it doesn't make any sense to download such movies with a spider - manually would be more appropriate) a download limit at least should enable you to download a few of them at one time. NEVER try to download a whole site at once! Check how much data the spider has downloaded and stop it if a given quota e.g. 200MB is reached. Next day you restart it again downloading the same amount thus flying below the webmaster's radar for the detection of hostile activities. The last hint for the usage of a spider: You can reduce the server load caused by the spider if you reduce the number of parallel connections the spider uses. According to my experience do never use more than 3-5 connections - if you are using more you won't be much faster anyway but a hostile reaction of a webmaster is much more likely.
You might have noticed some websites (especially movie sites) nowadays are promoted with "free downloads", "all movies downloadable", "no download-limit" and the like. Yes, there are still sites around offering this, but this also might be a trap: Especially many movie sites nowadays try to protect their content with DRM measures. DRM (Digital Rights Management) means you only can play all the movies as long as the source-site will allow it. You cannot give them to anybody else since you need a login (or the license itself). Ok, I consider the latter to be ok, but I am not willing to accept that any download is only workable as long as your installation of Microsoft's marvellous and reliable working operation system is alive - if you have to re-install it, all your DRM licences will be lost. A transfer or backup of these is not intented and not possible. My own personal way to handle DRM sites can be described with one word: boycott! And if I do a review of a site using DRM I promise the site-owner will not be pleased by this review! And from what I've seen by reviews of others I'm not alone with this attitude.
Coming up: The conclusion
Your guide to better porn!
