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Web Resurrect Tutorial

A complete guide to resurrecting expired domains and publishing content to WordPress

Introduction

This tutorial will guide you through the process of using Web Resurrect to recover content from expired domains and publish it to your WordPress site. Follow these steps carefully to ensure a successful resurrection process.

Step 1: Creating a New Project

To begin, you'll need to create a new project by entering the expired domain URL you want to resurrect.

  1. Log in to your Web Resurrect account
  2. Click on "New Project" in the dashboard
  3. Enter the domain name or specific URL you want to recover
  4. Optionally, set a maximum date for archived content (useful for avoiding outdated content)
  5. Click "Find URLs" to begin searching the Internet Archive for available content

The system will then search for all available URLs from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. This might take a few moments depending on the size of the domain and its archive history.

Step 2: Managing Found URLs

Once Web Resurrect finishes searching, you'll see a list of all found URLs. Before proceeding, you should clean up the list to remove duplicates and irrelevant pages.

Cleaning Duplicate URLs

To remove duplicate URLs:

  1. Activate the "Show Duplicate Only" filter from the filter dropdown
  2. This will select all duplicate URLs, keeping only unique ones unselected
  3. With the duplicates selected, you can delete them all at once

Removing Irrelevant URLs

You should also remove URLs that don't need to be restored, such as:

  • Contact pages
  • Legal pages (terms of service, privacy policy)
  • Login/register pages
  • Administrative pages

Simply select these URLs manually and delete them from your project.

Step 3: Configuring WordPress Integration

For detailed instructions on WordPress integration, see our complete WordPress Integration Guide →

Before scraping and publishing content, you need to configure the WordPress integration:

  1. Click on "WordPress Settings" in the toolbar
  2. Enter your WordPress URL (e.g., https://yourdomain.com)
  3. Enter your WordPress username
  4. Enter your application password (generated from your WordPress admin under Users → Profile → Application Passwords)
  5. Click "Save" to connect to your WordPress site

After connecting, Web Resurrect will automatically retrieve your WordPress categories and authors. You'll need to reopen the WordPress Settings to:

  1. Select whether to publish posts as draft (recommended) or publish them immediately
  2. Assign categories to specific authors (or assign all categories to the same author if you have just one)

Step 4: Scraping and Processing Content

Now you can begin scraping and processing the content:

  1. Select the URLs you want to process
  2. Click "Start Scraping" to begin extracting content from the Internet Archive
  3. For each scraped URL, you can preview the content before proceeding
  4. If the content isn't scraped correctly, you can try again by forcing a specific content type (Article or Product List)

Step 5: Rewriting Content (Optional)

To avoid potential copyright issues, you can rewrite the content using AI:

  1. Select the URLs with scraped content
  2. Click "Rewrite Content" to begin the AI rewriting process
  3. You can customize the rewriting by providing a brief in the WordPress Settings, including tone, style, or specific instructions

Step 6: Generating Featured Images (Optional)

Web Resurrect can generate new featured images for your content:

  1. Select the URLs you want to generate images for
  2. Click "Generate Images" to create AI-generated featured images based on the content
  3. The images will be thematically relevant to each article

Step 7: Publishing to WordPress

Finally, publish the processed content to your WordPress site:

  1. Select the URLs you want to publish
  2. Click "Post to WordPress" to begin the publishing process
  3. Web Resurrect will handle the publishing, maintaining the correct URL structure and assigning the proper categories and authors

Once published, you can access these posts in your WordPress dashboard as drafts (if you selected the draft option) or as published posts.

Step 8: Handling URL Redirections

For URLs that couldn't be scraped or that you chose not to process:

  1. Click "Download Redirects" to generate a redirection file
  2. This file can be imported into WordPress using plugins like Redirection or Rank Math
  3. If you have selected specific URLs, the file will only include those URLs; otherwise, it will include all non-scraped URLs

Handling Special URL Cases

If your expired domain had complex URL structures with nested paths or .html extensions, you might need additional steps:

  1. Install the "Permalink Manager Lite" plugin in your WordPress site
  2. Go to Tools → Permalink Manager → Tools
  3. Use the "Find and replace" feature to fix special characters that Web Resurrect added during the URL processing

Detailed instructions for special URL handling can be found by clicking the "URL Replacement Steps" button in your project.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can successfully resurrect content from expired domains and give it new life on your WordPress site. The process is designed to be efficient and straightforward, allowing you to recover valuable content with minimal effort.

Remember that scraping 20 pages typically takes only about 20 seconds, and rewriting content with featured images for 20 pages can be completed in around 5 minutes. Just be sure not to leave the page during processing, as the tasks run in your browser.

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