Clicking the "Download Snapshot" button below will download a zip file containing most of the information from the www.lutheranhub.com website. When unzipped this information requires about 150 MB of disk space. Once it's unzipped most of what can be done using the website can be done instead from your machine. The advantages of using the snapshot are (1) that responses to actions done via the snapshot will be nearly instantaneous (some can be slow if done using the website), (2) that the load on the website server is lessened since the processing is done locally and (3) that should the server stop working for any reason, all the functionality in the snapshot will still work properly.

The only disadvantage, other than consuming 150 MB (which is very little disk space), is that the downloaded snapshot will get out of date and will need to be downloaded in the future to get the latest information. Certain information, such as information about recent KFUO programs, "Thy Strong Word", "Sharper Iron" and "Concord Matters", will not be included in an older snapshot. Also, since some of the primary websites used (e.g., LCMS.org) are redoing their websites, the links to webpages within those websites may be broken. When this happens, a new snapshot made after those links have been fixed will need to be downloaded. Also, any enhancements made to the website will not exist in older snapshots.

The process of making the snapshot active on your machine is (1) click the download button below to download the snapshot and (2) unzip the download file into the appropriate location (any unused folder is OK) on your machine. That location should be an empty folder, which means that the easiest way of downloading a newer snapshot is to first delete the files from the previous snapshot (although this is not required).

Once the snapshot is in place, simply double-click the HomePage.html file from this folder and the home page from the website should appear.

All clicks done using the snapshot should use other information from the snapshot with the following exceptions: (1) clicking the church information for either a state or a district will send the request to lutheranhub.com, (2) accessing a map (via "The Bible"-->"Bible maps with hotspots" or via "Learning games (harder)"-->"Where?" will also send the request to the lutheranhub.com server and (3) accessing the pre-canned questions from "Questions and answers (Q&A)"-->"Questons from other sources" will also be answered via the lutheranhub.com website. Note that any subsequent actions done from a window from the server will be handled by the server and not by the local snapshot.

Downloading a snapshot has no impact on using the website. The website can always be accessed via the lutheranhub.com domain even after a snapshot has been downloaded.