A beginners guide to take automated website screenshots

If you have a professional website on the internet and are thinking to capture the entire website, then you are reading the right article. There are a lot of ways in which you can take website screenshots either manually or in an automated fashion. Below are some of the tips and tricks for capturing your website.

Computer’s built-in screenshot functionality

Both the operating systems Windows and Mac offer screenshot functions. In Mac systems, the keyboard shortcut for screenshot capture is ‘Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 4’. By using this command, you can select a portion of your screen for taking the snapshot. Using the keys ‘Cmd + V’ you can paste this screenshot in any of the applications. In Windows, you can use the key combination of ‘Alt + PrtSc’ to capture the active window. To paste this screenshot in other software, you can use press ‘Ctrl + V’.

Browser’s full page screenshot option

Browsers like Firefox, have an in-built screenshot functionality that can capture the entire webpage. This option is available in the developer tool section of the browser. No additional software is required to be installed to take snapshots. You can access the toolbox by using the keys ‘Ctrl + Shift + I’ on windows and keys ‘Cmd + Opt + I’ on Mac. Then click on the option called ‘Take a full page screenshot’. After this, you would be able to see a small camera icon in Toolbox’s menu bar. By clicking this camera icon, you can take the screenshot of the full webpage in Firefox.

Using a website to capture your website

Many offer services of capturing the screenshot of our entire website. You have to provide the URL of your website for the screenshots to be taken. One advantage of these services is that the screenshots are taken automatically. Sometimes the actual screenshot can differ if your website has elements that change frequently. Taking screenshots of webpages in the non-public domain isn’t possible as the service won’t be able to access it.

Capturing websites in Microsoft Edge

Microsoft has designed a new browser called the Edge browser. This browser offers features like bookmarking, website annotation, sharing functionality, full page capture, etc. To capture a page, click on the ‘Take a Web Note’ button in the browser. The bar will now show the clip tool and pens for annotations. Using the clip tool, you can select the area of your website to be captured. You can then add annotations and save the screenshot to the clipboard. To paste this screenshot to other applications you can use the ‘Cmd + V’ or ‘Ctrl + V’ keys.

Digital tools

Instead of taking the above-mentioned efforts to take screenshots of your website, you can hire a third-party service for the job. Web archiving services like Stillio, offer excellent archiving services that can be automated easily. In this service, snapshots of all the pages of your website are taken without any manual intervention. The data is stored in a structured format and is easily accessible through a customized dashboard. This service is a good solution for archiving heavy websites.

Jackson Gilbert is a Blogger. With his skills, he has been helping fellow marketers and brands worldwide. When not glued to his laptop, he can be found making travel plans that rarely happen.