🌐 Google Sites Clone

Clone any Google Sites page to static HTML — own your content forever

Quick Start · Features · How It Works · Tech Stack · Roadmap

No more vendor lock-in. Your Google Sites content belongs to you. Paste a URL, get a complete static clone with all images, styles, and navigation — ready for self-hosting.

💡 Concept

Google Sites stores your content behind an SPA that search engines can't index and you can't export. google-sites-clone uses a two-pass pipeline (SingleFile + Puppeteer) to capture everything — CSS fidelity from SingleFile and clean semantic content from Puppeteer — then merges both into standalone HTML files with localized images and SEO metadata.

✨ Features

| Feature | Description | |---------|-------------| | 🔍 Auto-crawl | Discovers all pages from sidebar navigation automatically | | 🎨 Two-pass pipeline | SingleFile for CSS/images + Puppeteer for clean content | | 🖼️ Image localization | Downloads all images as local files (no CDN dependency) | | 📺 YouTube thumbnails | Converts embedded iframes to clickable thumbnails | | 🎬 Video grid | Injects CSS Grid of video thumbnails into SingleFile pages | | 🗺️ SEO ready | Generates sitemap.xml + robots.txt | | ⚡ Batch processing | 5 pages per batch with anti-rate-limit pauses | | 🔄 SPA fallback | Internal navigation for pages that fail direct URL loading | | 🚀 GitHub Pages deploy | One command to push to gh-pages branch | | 📦 ZIP export | Create downloadable archive of cloned site |

🚀 Quick Start

npx google-sites-clone https://sites.google.com/view/your-site

git clone https://github.com/maximosovsky/google-sites-clone
cd google-sites-clone
npm install
node bin/gsclone.js https://sites.google.com/view/your-site

gsclone <url> [options]

Options:
  -o, --output <dir>   Output directory (default: ./clone)
  --no-images          Skip image localization
  --no-youtube         Skip YouTube thumbnail download
  --serve              Start local server after build
  --custom-nav         Use custom sidebar navigation
  --inline             Keep images inline (base64)

💡 How It Works

URL → [1. Crawl]      → page-map.json (all pages + structure)
    → [2. SingleFile]  → _pages/ CSS + base64 images (visual fidelity)
    → [3. Puppeteer]   → _content/ Clean content + iframe sources
    → [4. Images]      → site/images/ base64 → local files
    → [4b. Video]      → site/thumbnails/ YouTube/Vimeo thumbs
    → [5. Build]       → site/ iframe nav + pages + video grid + report

| Pass | Tool | Captures | |------|------|----------| | 1 | Puppeteer | Navigation structure → page-map.json | | 2 | SingleFile CLI | CSS, base64 images, layout → _pages/ | | 3 | Puppeteer (batch ×5) | Clean text, links, iframe srcs → _content/ | | 4 | Base64 decoder | Images from SingleFile → site/images/ | | 4b | Video scanner | YouTube/Vimeo thumbnails → site/thumbnails/ | | 5 | Build script | iframe nav + video grid + report + sitemap → site/ |

🏗️ Tech Stack

| Layer | Technology | |-------|------------| | Runtime | Node.js 18+ | | Content extraction | Puppeteer | | CSS preservation | SingleFile CLI | | CLI interface | Commander.js |

google-sites-clone/
├── bin/
│   └── gsclone.js          # CLI entry point
├── lib/
│   ├── index.js            # Pipeline orchestrator
│   ├── crawl.js            # Auto-crawl navigation
│   ├── singlefile.js       # SingleFile pass
│   ├── puppeteer.js        # Puppeteer batch extraction
│   ├── images.js           # Base64 → local images
│   ├── video.js            # YouTube/Vimeo thumbnail download
│   ├── build.js            # iframe nav + page assembly
│   └── report.js           # Clone report dashboard
├── rebuild.js              # Quick rebuild from cache
├── site/
│   ├── index.html          # Landing page (gsclone.osovsky.com)
│   └── style.css           # Design system
├── ARCHITECTURE.md
├── ROADMAP.md
├── llms.txt
└── package.json

🗺️ Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for full details.

• [x] Core pipeline (SingleFile + Puppeteer)
• [x] CLI interface
• [x] Auto-crawl navigation
• [x] Image localization
• [x] iframe-based navigation (sidebar + content)
• [x] Clone report dashboard
• [x] Landing page (gsclone.osovsky.com)
• [x] YouTube/Vimeo thumbnail download
• [x] GitHub Pages deploy
• [x] ZIP export
• [ ] npm publish

🔀 Alternatives

| Tool | Approach | Google Sites (new) | |------|----------|--------------------| | HTTrack | Recursive wget-style crawl | ❌ Can't execute JavaScript — downloads empty SPA shell | | google-sites-backup | Google Sites API (GData) | ❌ Classic Sites only, API deprecated | | generate-static-site | Headless SSR pre-render | ⚠️ Generic tool, no auto-crawl or Google Sites awareness | | google-sites-clone | Puppeteer + SingleFile | ✅ Full SPA rendering, auto-crawl, CSS fidelity, image localization |

New Google Sites (2020+) is a single-page application — all content is rendered by JavaScript. Traditional crawlers see an empty page. That's why this project uses a headless browser.

🤝 Contributing

Fork → feature/name → PR

📄 License

Maxim Osovsky. Licensed under MIT.