This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website

Downloading FOTW website

Last modified: 2024-12-28 by rob raeside
Keywords: fotw |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors


To build your own copy of the FOTW website:

  1. Make a directory fotw on your computer.
  2. Go to the full site download section of this page to locate the contents of the website in a series of zip files. Unzip them into your local directory fotw. Subdirectories images, flags, misc will be created as necessary. 

Note that these zipped files are several MB in size each, with a total size of over 1 GB. Should you want to move them between non-networked pc-s, or pc-s on a relatively slow network, you're advised to copy the zipped files to a memory stick to move them. 

To look at your local copy of FOTW, open the file index.html in the flags subdirectory.

Updates to the website are provided around the beginning of each month - check back here for these monthly updates.

Full Site Download

You can obtain the entire contents of FOTW using the following zip files. These files will provide you with FOTW up to the end of the last month.

Download and unzip the following files into your FOTW directory (the zip files contain path information that will automatically unzip them into a folder called 'flags'):

Download and unzip the following files into your FOTW directory (the zip files contain path information that will automatically unzip them into a folder called 'images', split into 26 sub-folders, a, b, c,...z)

Download and unzip the following file into your FOTW directory (this zip file contains path information that will automatically unzip them into a folder called 'misc'):

Once you have unzipped all the files, go to FOTW/flags/index.html and enjoy the flags. To keep your local copy of FOTW up to date, come back here monthly to receive updates (described below). These updates are generally provided about the beginning of each month.

Monthly Updates

To update your own local copy of FOTW, determine when your copy was last updated (check the date on the index.html file). If it was updated last month, you need only do step 1 here, if more than one month's update is required, do step 2 as necessary. If you wish to delete files that are now inoperative in the directory, go to step 3.

IMPORTANT NOTE: if you require more than one month's update, be sure to update the oldest material first (i.e., do step 2 first).

STEP 1
To update with the past month's material only:

Material from December 2024:

All zip files are provided with path information included. If you have "Use folder names" checked, they will automatically unzip into the /flags/, /images/, /misc/ folders and sub-folders, as needed. You simply need to download the files and unzip them into your FOTW directory.

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STEP 2: To update with material from previous months:

Material from November 2024:

Material from October 2024:

Material from September 2024:

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STEP 3
To clean up your directories by removing deleted files. The following text files contain lists of files that became inoperative in the past few months. These can be safely deleted from your local copy - but do be careful about file names. File xx-yyyyy.gif may be dead, but replaced by file xx_yyyyy.gif. Instructions for programmed deletion are contained in each file:

Weekly updates

Editors and mirror operators may wish to update their copies of the site on a more frequent basis. The website is normally updated on Saturdays, and a weekly update is made available here on a weekly basis (again generally on Saturdays). All zipfiles are built with path information included.

Building a mirror site of FOTW

Once you have an up to date local copy of FOTW website, you may make it available on the internet as a mirror site of FOTW.

You can put your banner (or the banner of the organization that hosts the site) on all the FOTW pages as follows:

  1. Prepare your banner as a gif file.
  2. Name it linea2.gif.
  3. Put the file in the images subdirectory.
  4. Change the text of the page host.html, in the flags subdirectory ,so that it tells the visitor about your site and it includes a link to your homepage.

You can not

  • modify the contents of FOTW pages and images;
  • put third-party advertisement on FOTW pages (e.g. you cannot put third-party logos and advertisement in linea2.gif file);
  • sell the access to FOTW pages and images.
You could install error.html, to be served as the FotW error page for a 404 Not Found error.
  • Use the proper method to have your systems serve this page in case of a missing file. In most cases this will mean adding a line like ErrorDocument 404 /flags/error.html to the -htaccess file.
  • Add to the header of error.html a <base> line to the absolute fotw/flags location of error.html. Without that, the links in the document will not work if, e.g., a missing image is reported.

Making your mirror an official one

After your mirror site is set up and freely available, you might like to have it added to the list of FOTW official mirror sites. Send a message to the FOTW Director about your mirror of FotW. Your mirror will then be added to the list, and you'll receive monthly e-mails announcing updates to the FotW files. Your only duty will be to follow up on those announcements as described above, to keep your mirror up to date.