Anyhow. Good guide. I wonder if it would also be useful to put the site on CloudFlare and enable full site caching using Page Rules. Though one would need to disable it temporary (or go Pro) for allowing selected users to login to make required changes. This should help reduce the load on the server hosting the archive site. Would also likely prevent hacking attempts.
XenForo is USD 55 per year now right?
... last time I renewed was a couple of years back and I don't think I'm due to renew my 8 licenses until around June 2021 
If you know of a program or service that will do that, please let me know. I haven't found one yet that will create a stand-alone, mirror-image copy of a Xenforo forum (or, I would imagine any other similar forum or site). They always create a copy that's broken in one way or another, and certainly isn't "stand-alone."
Before I go into that, I would have to bring @Chris D, @Mike, or @Brogan into the conversation to see if it's against the license or not (and if it is, the license should be updated to reflect). This is because it's 1 install per license, but when you make a site static you are still using XenForo code to an extent (the HTML, CSS, and JS). While the board may not be active and you don't have a license for the site to run anymore, I'm unsure whether or not the copyrighted works of how it is displayed would be in violation as that is copyrighted as well. If it is, you could essentially strip the posts one by one and add them to your own formatting, but keep the same URL format, making this task much more daunting (which would be easier doing the recommended in the last paragraph here).
/threads/how-to-archive-a-xenforo-forum-to-make-it-read-only.180888/ saved as threads-180888.html but the static HTML file served when the URL is accessed. That way you wouldn't need a 301/302 redirect and everything stays intact.
Even if this thread is crawled after the board is turned off with no replies, saved as threads-180888.html and URL rewrites serve that static file with the typical request while XenForo is no longer present on the system. If done that way, there is absolutely no way to install it again to update minor things... one would need to edit file by file.
This should be added to the terms so that everyone is aware they can abandon their XF installation for a new project while keeping the old board with content "alive" that could potentially rake in a few bucks from speedy/cached static pages (as I thought it was grey area due to the HTML/CSS/JS still being copyrighted).
You could probably find software to spider and save the content, but the issue is getting the URLs just right to where you wouldn't need Google to crawl it again and lose juice because the title would be removed from the URL to something automated like domain_com-000001.html, domain_com-000002.html... While the software may copy it and change links on the saved page, it would lose some ranking by linking to 000002.html instead of the original /threads/thread-title.id/ post.I've been paying for a license that doesn't expire for more than 10 years. That's not the question or an issue.
My question is whether anyone knew of software or a service that would make a copy.
If not (and I suspect not, since I sure tried to find a good one, but couldn't), that's fine.
If the XF files are not being used then it's not an XF licensing issue.
Again, no.
That's why the terms of a license should be clarified, in my opinion. XF still has a copyright on the HTML/CSS/JS that is rendered on the static pages. Also, if the pages are static and one didn't pay for branding removal, could branding be stripped from those static pages?
Don't come at me with a bunch of C&Ds if I have static pages up with branding stripped from the HTML because I put in just enough effort for them to be AdSense revenue sites then!
