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Website Crawling

Learn how to add content to your chatbot by crawling websites. ChatMaven's website crawler can automatically extract and process content from your website or documentation pages.

Getting Started​

Prerequisites​

  • Website URL
  • Access permissions
  • Sitemap (optional)
  • Robots.txt compliance

Basic Setup​

  1. Go to "Data Sources" → "Website"
  2. Click "Add Website"
  3. Enter the website URL
  4. Configure basic settings:
    • Crawl depth
    • Update frequency
    • Language detection

Configuration Options​

URL Settings​

  1. Include Patterns

    https://example.com/docs/*
    https://example.com/blog/*

  2. Exclude Patterns

    https://example.com/private/*
    https://example.com/admin/*

  3. Parameters

    • Follow redirects
    • Handle dynamic content
    • Respect nofollow

Authentication​

  1. Basic Auth

    • Username/password
    • API key
    • Bearer token

  2. Cookie-based

    • Session cookies
    • Authentication tokens
    • Custom headers

  3. OAuth

    • OAuth 2.0 support
    • Token management
    • Refresh handling

Crawling Settings​

Depth and Scope​

  1. Crawl Depth

    • Surface (1 level)
    • Medium (3 levels)
    • Deep (unlimited)

  2. Content Selection

    • Main content
    • Navigation
    • Footers
    • Sidebars

  3. Media Handling

    • Images
    • PDFs
    • Downloads
    • Embedded content

Rate Limiting​

  • Requests per second
  • Concurrent connections
  • Bandwidth limits
  • Crawl window

Content Processing​

Extraction Rules​

  1. Content Selectors

    article.content
    div.documentation
    section.main

  2. Ignore Elements

    .navigation
    .footer
    .ads

  3. Custom Rules

    • XPath queries
    • CSS selectors
    • Regular expressions

Content Cleaning​

  • Remove ads
  • Clean formatting
  • Extract main content
  • Preserve structure

Scheduling​

Automatic Updates​

  1. Frequency Options

    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly

  2. Update Types

    • Full crawl
    • Incremental
    • Changed pages only

  3. Notifications

    • Completion
    • Errors
    • Changes detected

Monitoring​

Performance Metrics​

  • Pages crawled
  • Success rate
  • Processing time
  • Error count

Content Changes​

  • New pages
  • Modified content
  • Deleted pages
  • Structure changes

Error Tracking​

  • Connection issues
  • Authentication failures
  • Processing errors
  • Rate limiting

Best Practices​

Optimization​

  1. Performance

    • Set appropriate delays
    • Use incremental updates
    • Optimize selectors

  2. Resource Usage

    • Limit concurrent requests
    • Schedule during off-peak
    • Monitor bandwidth

  3. Content Quality

    • Verify extracted content
    • Check formatting
    • Test in chatbot

Maintenance​

  1. Regular Tasks

    • Review crawl logs
    • Update patterns
    • Check authentication
    • Verify content

  2. Troubleshooting

    • Monitor errors
    • Check access
    • Verify settings
    • Test selectors

Next Steps​