ZIM Site Creator

A lightweight tool to archive websites as ZIM files for offline browsing with Kiwix.

Overview

ZIM Site Creator automates:

• Downloading a website with all pages and assets.
• Converting it into a ZIM file with zimwriterfs.
• Cleaning up temporary files.

Prerequisites

• Raspberry Pi OS / Debian / Ubuntu
• wget
• zimwriterfs (included in zim-tools)

Install dependencies on Raspberry Pi:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install wget zim-tools

zimwriterfs becomes available after installing zim-tools.

Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/MaxHuiskes/Create-Zim-Files.git
cd Create-Zim-Files
chmod +x make_zim.sh

Usage

sudo ./make_zim.sh <site_url> <output_folder> <zim_title> <zim_description> <creator>

Example

sudo ./make_zim.sh http://textfiles.com /media/disk2t/data/selfmade \
"Textfiles.com Archive" \
"Archived text files from textfiles.com" \
"textfiles.com"

Arguments:

• site_url → website to download
• output_folder → location where the .zim will be stored
• zim_title → title inside ZIM metadata
• zim_description → description metadata
• creator → creator metadata

The script deletes the temporary download directory and leaves only the final .zim.

Docker Stack Integration (Optional)

Serve the ZIM files with kiwix-serve:

version: "3.8"
services:
  kiwix:
    image: ghcr.io/kiwix/kiwix-serve
    container_name: kiwix
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - /media/disk2t/data:/data
    command: ["--library", "/data/library.xml"]

Steps:

1. Place .zim files in /media/disk2t/data/.
2. Update library.xml:

kiwix-manage /media/disk2t/data/library.xml add /media/disk2t/data/*.zim

or to also include subfolders

sudo kiwix-manage /media/kiwix/data/library.xml add $(find /media/kiwix/data -type f -name "*.zim") --zimPathToSave=/data

3. Start:

docker compose up -d

4. Access via:

http://<server-ip>:8080

Optional PDF Documentation

Requires pandoc + texlive:

sudo apt install pandoc texlive-xetex
pandoc docs/explanation.md -o docs/explanation.pdf

Contributing

Fork → Change → Pull Request.

License

MIT License