Help Needed with Website!
Greetings,
I am a newbie, so please forgive me if I posted this in the wrong place.... I am not a webmaster, but I do own a website. My webmaster bailed with no warning right before we were supposed to have an update. I have the domain access information from my server, but I don't know enough to be able to tell what information I need. Can I access our webpages at all since I don't have my webmaster's FTP program? Or if not, is there a way to "wipe" the site clean so I can start over? I realize that what I really need to do is to learn web design myself so I don't have to completely depend on others.....
Best Regards,
Aiden
greg posted this at 06:44 — 27th September 2007.
He has: 1,581 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
If you have the domain access you should have control over everything... FTp passwords and users, files and folders passwords (if any exist)
I would advise on changing all the access names and passwords for all login including folders, databases, ftp login, control panel(web based) login etc
You could wipe it clean, but is that what you want? what site is it? link..
and don't worry about being a noob, everyone was at one time, and everyone is still learning.
Aiden posted this at 18:44 — 27th September 2007.
He has: 7 posts
Joined: Sep 2007
Thanks! You're right: I really don't want to wipe everything clean, just to update it. I've been on a marathon reading session with books on web design, but I don't understand a lot of it, especially about ftp. I guess Ftp is how to transfer stuff from your computer to the server, but would I have to have the pages on my computer already? Or can I get the pages from the site, update them, and then transfer the updated ones? In fact, I can't even figure out where to log on with the Ftp password on my server! Arrgghh... My site is http://midnightcalling.com/
MrCat posted this at 19:48 — 27th September 2007.
They have: 151 posts
Joined: Aug 2007
I think you can access your FTP from your control panel... I'm not sure though as some have different platforms. But you may want to take a look at it. Another option is to seek help from your hosting provider
ClickXposure.com - PPC Management
Smp Business Hosting posted this at 20:03 — 27th September 2007.
They have: 60 posts
Joined: Aug 2007
That would be your best bet, if your hosting provider fails to help then come back here
Regards, Steve
sitesupport posted this at 23:29 — 27th September 2007.
He has: 190 posts
Joined: Jun 2007
Nice website. You should be able to find out your FTP information you need to login and edit the files on your site, they do not need to be downloaded to your computer to edit or view them. You'll need to have some sort of FTP software on your computer however, but you can download WiseFTP for free as a 30 day trial.
intruth posted this at 05:55 — 28th September 2007.
They have: 61 posts
Joined: Dec 2005
Nice site... Ya my html code is way old school I have to re learn coding like xml my site still works and is indexed well on google...
Aiden posted this at 01:48 — 30th September 2007.
He has: 7 posts
Joined: Sep 2007
Thanks, everyone! Oh, so the ftp program goes both ways.....I think I understand it a bit more. Does anyone recommend a good manual or book on the basic procedures for putting up a website? I spent some time browsing in my local bookstore, but everything I found was quite expensive and had so much information that my head spun. I'm sure I'd need all of this eventually, but right now I'm just trying to get a handle on the basics. Some people have recommended taking a class at a local community college, while others say that you can learn what they teach on your own. Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks!
ap1106 posted this at 17:03 — 1st October 2007.
He has: 18 posts
Joined: Oct 2006
smartFTP is a very good ftp program & has no 30 day trials or anything, just completely freeee
i'm completely self taught through just messing around... its not to hard to pick up basic stuff, a quick google search for "how to make a website" or sumthin will no doubt bring up a load of tutorial sites
Tizag.com is pretty good, click here
PopeCuervoLime posted this at 19:16 — 1st October 2007.
He has: 34 posts
Joined: Oct 2006
Hey there,
Learning HTML and CSS is very easy; I am self-taught and find HTML and CSS one of the easiest computer languages to learn. Like the guy above me said, you can google around to find tutorials on things.
If I may point you in a direction I would recommend the following two sites:
1. http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
2. http://www.htmldog.com/
And to know how far you can expand your skills I recommend taking a look at these sites:
1. http://www.csszengarden.com/
2. http://www.alistapart.com/
And as for finding a free, easy, and secure FTP client you can always get the FireFox browser and download the FireFTP add on: fireftp.mozdev.org/. When you access it from the Tools menu it'll open the FTP window in a new tab, you enter in your logon info and you can just drag and drop files from your computer to the server.
Does this help?
Homepage: erick S P A C E.com
Yosemite: yosemite.erickspace.com
Aiden posted this at 22:46 — 5th October 2007.
He has: 7 posts
Joined: Sep 2007
Hey thanks! I just bookmarked everything! htmldog looks fabulous!
Aiden posted this at 22:43 — 5th October 2007.
He has: 7 posts
Joined: Sep 2007
Thanks! I uploaded smartftp, and the tutorials for it seem very cool.
Leananshee posted this at 00:47 — 2nd October 2007.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: Sep 2007
Some good things to keep in mind:
1. Any pages you edit, edit them offline. Then upload them to your server.
2. Always keep multiple copies of your content, properly organized by website version, usually labelled by date.
3. Make sure the site structure stays logical. default.html or index.html is usually the homepage, and stands alone. Your other pages have their own folder, graphics, scripts, css the same.
4. And always live test your updates, to make sure everything still works like you want it to.
The biggest problem a site owner encounters when taking over a site is maintaining that order, which is crucial to its continued success.
Springs hop eternal in the hearts of the eccentric....
Aiden posted this at 22:52 — 5th October 2007.
He has: 7 posts
Joined: Sep 2007
Thanks for the tips! I've been talking to other ezine owners and discovered that most of them give access to the site to all of their staff. I think one of my mistakes was to leave the site and updating solely in the hands of my webmaster. Originally he had agreed to let me observe him going through the update process just to give me some idea of it, but then he always fudged out on doing so. I should have insisted....
How hard is it to update a site? Initially my webmaster told me that once our site was up, updating would be "a snap". But with each update, it would be a long drawn out process where he would have a succession of problems and I have since wondered if he were simply A) lazy; or B) wasn't as competent as he claimed.
greg posted this at 09:40 — 6th October 2007.
He has: 1,581 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
what is the site written in? PHP, HTML, CSS all three? any Javascript?
and then the main question is-
whatever it is written in can you understand that code?
If no then it will be very difficult to update is as you don't know what you are doing.
and learning to make a website. although the basics are easy, it totally depends on how quickly you learn things and how well you remember once you have learnt.
how much time you have etc etc
your webmaster probably could update easily as he wrote it and knows how it works and where everything is.
sites can be made in various different ways, and his way of doing one thing might be a different way to how you would do it or how a certain tutorial you read explains how to do it
Not wanting to put you off though. and once you know 'the basics', seeing the various different methods to do the same thing will become easier to understand. and you should then be able to see how your webmaster designed and made your site
by the basics I mean how to align things around a page correctly, how to use colours and set sizes and manipulate the simple things like bold, italic, image positioning, divs and a little css for spacing and alignment
saying you can drive a car, so therefore you can race competitively in the F1 or indycar competitions is not correct
you can get from A to B. stop at traffic lights, handle roundabouts and get yourself to work and back perfectly well.
but that ability is a totally different level to what skills and knowledge you need to race in professional car racing such as F1
and website making is very similar.
you can make a simple webpage with a little text, few images and a couple of colours, or a huge site with millions of members, hundreds of pages, catalogues, purchases/sales, fancy images and layout etc etc and all the possibilities inbetween.
So it depends on what you want to learn. and what you want to learn depends on :
A) is it a hobby - any level is good to learn as it's all good fun and interesting so there are no limits
B) its for a purpose - you only need to learn the things that you require for your particular site, learning things you will never use is possibly pointless
as for how to advice what you should do and what you need to learn,
I don't know what you already know about web code (HTML, CSS, PHP JAVASCRIPT)
the best method is to get to a position where you can successfully upload a test page to your live website
edit the test page on your PC and then upload it again to overwrite the old one to make the changes happen on the site
then you can play around with the code in that test page
changing one thing at a time re-uploading and seeing what it does when on the internet
read a few tutorials like tizag.com and w3schools.com and when you don't follow something you can try it our in your test page
the alternative is for someone to write a control panel for your site
where all the text areas, images and colours can be changed with a click of a button
I can make control panels for you site as can many others here, although as it's a very involved job I doubt you will get someone to do it for free. if you do be wary of them, their abilities and their true intentions.
but of course, while this will allow you to edit your site easily and without having to learn anything, it wont give you any control over your site layout or the ability to understand how your site work to solve a problem if one arises or to re-design it to look how you want.
I'm gonna stop now. I didn't realise I'd written so much
Aiden posted this at 06:22 — 16th October 2007.
He has: 7 posts
Joined: Sep 2007
Thanks! I've been checking out a few tutorials, and I seem to understand the principles, if not the details yet. I think you are right: its going to be very hard to figure out the current website since I didn't do it. I think that my former webmaster should have offered to help me set up some sort of alternative instead of just bailing out. It is a great site, but I think it is much too complicated for what I needed.
"B) its for a purpose - you only need to learn the things that you require for your particular site, learning things you will never use is possibly pointless"
This is so true! That's what I'm running into, especially with books is that they contain reams of information that I don't need right now. I may just print out one of the more concise web tutorials and go through them step by step.
greg posted this at 14:04 — 16th October 2007.
He has: 1,581 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
You still need to know the basics though, as even with a site already made, like you have, you might want to change it a bit, so rather than struggle and shift items around with the code you already have, you could decide to change it a bit with the code you have learned.
http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/ and w3schools.com/html/default.asp
both excellent sites to start of with
The links on the left of both sites pages are the categories for HTML. If you go to their homepages there is also tutorials for PHP, CSS, Javascript etc.
But you should start with HTML and CSS and understand the basics of those before even looking at PHP or anything else.
In my opinion, you should go to one of those sites and just go through from page one to the end of the HTML tutorial.
Most of it is very simple stuff, and you will pick up a lot in a day.
Tizag is sometimes a little better explained, but w3schools often has a link at the bottom of each pages tutorial where you can edit the HTML to what you just learned and play with it a bit
If you do decide to go through one of those tutorials, my advice is forget the layout a "little" bit, and concentrate on learning the tags, like is bold, link text is a link etc
Once you have a good grasp of how to control the elements on a page, like the text, links and divs etc, then move onto CSS and learn how to nicely align around the page what you just learned in HTML.
Have a test page that you can upload to your server. That is very useful as when you don't fully understand something or want to experiment with it, you can copy and paste the code from the tutorial into the test page, edit what you want and upload to your server to see the results.
If you go from start to finish in one of those site's tutorials you will be suprised to what you learn in 3-4 days. Then you may be in a position to play with your site a little, copy all the files from your site to a test site or test folder on that site and you can edit anything you want without changing the real site.
Then when you can play with the basics, and get stuck with how to do a 'specific' thing, you can ask in here
Because of course asking in here "how do I make or change a website" is impossible to answer here, we will be writing a tutorial that is already done on the net.
Again, personally I think tizag is a little better all round, but both are good and have different strengths.
But of course ask away if you are stuck with anything
Good luck
webwiz posted this at 19:51 — 17th October 2007.
He has: 629 posts
Joined: May 2007
Just a suggestion - If my use of the Whois service is correct, I traced your host to http://mister.net/. If so, they have a control panel with a file manager. You could use it to copy the old file to your computer, make the changes, then go back to the control panel to upload the new page.
If I am mistaken, try logging in to your host to see if they do have a control panel like this.
Cordially, David
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delete from internet where user_agent="MSIE" and version < 8;
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