Reference number: CH000745

How can I copy something from a webpage to my webpage?

Question:

How can I copy something from a webpage to my webpage?

Additional information:

Users who are creating their own webpage for the first time or come across something they like may wish to use someone else's code or information on their webpage to learn how something is done or to duplicate the same effect.

IMPORTANT: Before using any other site's code or information, you should always get the website's or author's permission as it almost always going to be copyrighted material unless otherwise stated. If the code or information is public domain, it will be stated within the code of the page; otherwise, assume it is copyrighted.

Answer:

All the information and how a webpage has been created can be easily viewed by any user on the Internet. Additional information about how to view the source code of a web page in your browser can be found on document CH000746.

Below is break down of how to copy all the different types of information or code from one webpage to another.

Plaintext
HTML and web scripts
Images, sounds, or movies
Embedded objects
Server scripts or programs

Plaintext

Plaintext or any text information viewable from your browser can be easily copied like any other text from any other file.

If you're not familiar with how to copy text, see our copy dictionary definition for additional help.

HTML and web scripts

Users who visit a page that performs a special feature, such as displaying the current date or a countdown for example, may wish to incorporate that feature on their web page. To do this, you will need to view the web page's source code; information about how to do this can be found on document CH000746.

In the page's source code you will need to locate the code required for this script to work. This may be difficult for users who are unfamiliar with HTML code and/or the language the script was written in. However, most web scripts will be enclosed in the <script> and </script> tags, and copying these tags as well as all the information in-between these tags will usually enable the script to work on your web page.

Finally, if you're designing your web page in a WYSIWYG editor such as Microsoft FrontPage, you need to make sure you're pasting the HTML code into the HTML portion of the program. Many WYSIWYG editors will have different types of editors, one section that allows the user to simply create a page without worrying about the code and another section that enables the user to get into the code. In the case of Microsoft FrontPage, a user can get into the HTML portion by clicking the HTML tab at the bottom left hand side of the window. 

Images, sounds, or movies

Users who wish to use another site's images, sounds, or movies can do so by using one of the below suggestions.

Copy image, sound, or movie to your computer / server and use

Almost all images, sounds, and movies can be copied to your computer and then viewed on your webpage.

Images

Images can be easily copied from a webpage by right-clicking an image and selecting "Save Picture as" or "Save Image as", depending on the browser you're using.

Once selected, you should be prompted with a location with where you wish to save the image, specify the location of where you wish to save the file. Keep in mind if this web page is going to be posted online, you will also need to upload this image when you upload the web page.

Note: Although almost all images can be saved using the above method, some websites may prevent images from being copied to your computer because they are copy protected. Computer Hope will not assist users in copying these images as it is obvious that they do not have permission from the site hosting the pictures.

Sound and movies

Unless the sound or movies file has a direct link to download and save the file to a specified location on your hard disk drive, it can be a little trickier to copy another web page's sound or movie file. However, the easiest method would be to view your Internet browser's cache and locate the sound or movie file saved in the cache.

• Additional information about clearing and viewing your browser's cache can be found on document CH000510.
• If you're trying to save a movie from a popular service such as YouTube see document CH001002.

If you're not aware of what the movie or sound file's name is, view the web page's source to get that information.

Note: The above instructions are for copying sound or movie files that are not streaming. Some sites have streaming audio and video, which can be even trickier to copy.

Link to the image, sound, or movie from your website to the other server

In addition to copying the files directly to your computer or server, a user could also link directly to the image, sound, or movie from another page. However, we do not recommend this method as it will slow down the load time of your web page because it's coming from another server; it is also likely to become lost because it may move on the other server which would cause your link to become bad; and finally, causes additional bandwidth usage on the site you're linking to, which may cause your server to become blocked or reported because you're stealing bandwidth.

However, users who are still interested in doing this can simply copy the HTML source code for the image, sound, or movie to their web page and have it work on their webpage without having to upload the image, sound, or movie to their server.

Keep in mind that many pages do not specify the complete URL, so you may need to change the path of the file so the browser knows how to load it. For example, an image link from Computer Hope may look like the below example.

<img src="image.gif">

Because this above example does not specify a domain and path of the file when this code is copied to your web page, it will not load because the browser is attempting to load the image from your computer or server and not the server where the code was copied from. If this code was copied from Computer Hope, you would likely need to change it to the below example.

 <img src="http://www.computerhope.com/image.gif">

If you need to know the complete path to an image, you can also right-click the image and click "Properties" to view the complete path to the file.  

Embedded objects

Some files such as Macromedia Flash files are embedded web objects, which means not only will you have to copy the file or link to the file on the other server, but you will also need to copy the HTML used to display the file. In this case, we suggest looking at the source code of the object to determine the name of the file and how it is loaded, and copy both the code and the file.

Server scripts or programs

Sever scripts, SSI, or other web programs are almost always protected or set to execute and not to be read. This means programs such as polls, search engines, forums, chat, etc. cannot be copied and used on your own page.

For these types of programs or scripts to become functional on your website, you would need to download the program, install it, and set it up for your own computer or server. Many sites use open source or free programs that can be downloaded for free or for a small fee. For example, many forums at the bottom of each of the pages will list the type of forum as well as a link to where to download it.