I saw a question on Yahoo! Answers, asking how would one go about downloading Wikipedia. So, I set out trying to find out the best way to do that. There are various ways to do this, and various things to download. I will be covering the HTML download version. Others can be found here.

First, you will need to install some software, unless you already have a way to decompress the archives packed with the 7-zip program. WinRAR should be able to unpack these files as well. Once you have that installed, navigate to the download page for the Wikipedia Static HTML Dumps.

There are a few files in the English version directory:

There are 4 archives for the English version of the download. Each one is roughly 1.5 GB. I am only going to download one at this time. I am not sure I have the disk space to unpack this beast either.

Possibly it would be best to download with a download manager such as GetRight. Once you have them all downloaded, which should take a good while, if not days, unpack them using the 7-Zip program, or WinRAR. Once unpacked you should be able to open up the index.html file in the base directory, and browse your very own local copy of Wikipedia!

Keep in mind, that bandwidth isn’t free, and that you should help support Wikipedia if you download this, by surfing to the Wikipedia Funraising page..