- Average user rating: stars out of 40 votes Back to product review
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User reviews
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
5 stars
Version: BlackWidow 4.37
Pros: I recently had a problem with a website I own, whereby the host access went down permanently and I had also lost backups of my files. I thought I was doomed, but along came black widow! With this tool I was able to successfully download my whole website from its original host, in order to move it to the new one. I've looked everywhere for a tool like this and this is definitely the best I've found.Brilliant, 5*s!
Cons: Quite difficult to use at first, the options are somewhat confusing, and it often doesn't do quite what you wanted it to. Despite this however, once you've worked out how to use it, it works like a charm!
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
3 stars
Version: BlackWidow 4.37
"excellent if you're undemanding"
Pros: good viewing of what you have or will download.
tabs and directory tree structure make a nice interface once you get the hang of it.
i'm looking for something that can roll numbers in pathnames and filenames and this can roll numbers, sort of (see cons).
once the painful process of guessing what features do is behind you, this program is pretty good.
Cons: it can roll numbers, but only in the filname, not in the pathname. Example:
wherever.com/folder002/pic07.jpg
It can roll pic07.jpg to pic08.jpg and so on, but YOU have to input folder002 and folder003 and so on. it lets you input a links page, so that's not quite so painful if you know how to use find-replace features in whatever text editor you use to quickly create a links page.
By the way, it can pad pic99 to pic099 and it can roll pic099 to pic100 but can't roll pic99 to pic100 which is what you need more often than not when rolling numbers in filenames.
it took me a while to figure out using a local links page.
unhelpful error comes up when executing after loading a local links page unless you have a url, ANY url, in the main url box, even though there are plenty of urls in your links page. that one was hard to figure out, because i thought something must be wrong with my local links page.
scan/download is manual usually, but automatic when you merely select a local links page.
things like that are just asking for repeated user error.
the links file can be a text file, but must be full of html links, with A HREF and such, not just a list of urls. that's just silly.
the scan filters are great, but i see no way to apply them other than to delete the current scan and start over with the filters in place.
help files mention url filter and file filter tabs for dealing with filters but help doesn't bother to mention WHERE to find those tabs. most of those features mentioned seem to be in the scan filters section, so i think the help files weren't updated since a previous version.
i gave it three stars instead of four because the price implies the intended scope/scale. for 40 bucks i want the features that it includes to be fleshed out, thought out, flexible, not stubborn and skeletal.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
5 stars
Version: BlackWidow 4.37
"Great product that does it's job!"
Pros: A good value for money. Does not take up much system resources. Quick and easy to use.Best of all, the support is excellent!
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
5 stars
Version: BlackWidow 4.37
"Exactly what I was looking for"
Pros: This is a web spider that can be tought to do exactly what is needed for a variety of downloading tasks. It is flexible and versatile. I did go with the 5.0 beta version rather than 4.37
Cons: 4.37 didn't work well on 2/3 machines. 4.40 installed fine but the 5.0 beta version is truly the necessary download
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2 stars
Version: BlackWidow 5.22
Cons: comberson and unable to understand how to perform a basic search of the web, Only wantted to do searches on my computer.
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