Ask HN: 87yr old yoga teacher asked me to manage her website. Where to start?

27 points by costcopizza 2 years ago | 45 comments

Hi HN, I've been helping a truly wonderful lady with basic computer and YouTube tasks. That's evolved into her wanting me to take over website updates/management from the current person, who will not be doing it after a couple months.

All I know is that: "it's currently edited using Macromedia Dreamweaver from 2004 and then the process entails fusing file transfer protocol to upload to the server host (webhero). The software and OS cannot be upgraded on my old laptop which has Dreamweaver'

What is the easiest way to get this transferred or independent from a mid 2000s laptop?

On a scale of 1-10 of general technical ability, I'm a 3.

Thanks a ton

http://julierussell.org/

BadCookie 2 years ago |

If it were me, I’d just rebuild the site manually on something like Squarespace (or maybe Shopify) by copying-and-pasting the text and downloading/uploading any images you want to keep. I didn’t see any interactive features in my brief browsing of the site, but if there are any, it would influence my choice of which service to use.

The hardest part technically seems like it will be transferring the domain name.

sgentle 2 years ago | |

Absolutely second this. I've done it both ways and the one where you're on the hook for website updates will eventually wear you down, no matter how good your intentions.

Most recently, I helped my hairdresser get Squarespace set up for his business. We had a few follow-up chats for the things he couldn't figure out, but other than that he's been fine updating it on his own. Most importantly, there's a frontline support team and it's not me; I'm happy to help, but I don't want to be on the critical path.

joemazerino 2 years ago | |

This. Building something the client can manage or see herself manage is the essential step in migration process.

Macromedia 2004! Wowzers

codingdave 2 years ago |

If the laptop was using FTP to get the file uploaded, then you already have a directory of the static HTML for the site somewhere on the laptop. So no need to get fancy - find and copy that directory somewhere else and you have the site. Put it up on Github pages, S3, or really any host you want and you are free of the old laptop.

You will lose the editing in Dreamweaver, but you will have the content. And there are less than a dozen pages on that, without much in common with each other aside from a menu and the background, so you could edit the site by hand fairly easily, or you could put it into a modern tool in less than an hour and modernize the design at the same time (if she wants that.)

cjbprime 2 years ago |

The easiest way is probably to ignore the laptop, use a web spidering tool to download all of the content, and upload it to a no-code HTML tool like maybe wix.com (which I haven't actually used) and make changes using that.

A second option might be to ignore the laptop, use a web spidering tool, and then manually edit the HTML. That would not be very fun.

If this is an actual business, yoga studio websites these days all seem to integrate with other services like mindbodyonline.com to allow reservations etc.

dzhiurgis 2 years ago | |

Sounds like there’s a massive market for tools like wix, squarespace or webflow to just scrape off your site and remake it into one of the many templates using chatgpt.

Surely something like this should already exist.

4death4 2 years ago | |

I second this. The days of running your website are over, except for hobbyists. Most people are much better served by spending a few dollars to get access to a high quality tool for managing your site.

codegeek 2 years ago |

If it is just a few pages and mostly static, I would rebuild using a CMS like WordPress for future maintenance or at the minimum, a brand new static site and host on a $5 digitalocean droplet or netlify/cloudflare pages.

Current setup is too old to try and work with and you may save time doing from scratch.

novateg 2 years ago |

Download the website using this tool https://website-downloader.onrender.com/ and start editing. You can use free hosting services like Netlify or Vercel to host the site. The website doesn't have a search presence, so even if you re-build, it doesn't hurt.

donclark 2 years ago | |

Does the website work? If so how? The page never loads for me and I tried FF and Chrome. Thank you in advance.

novateg 2 years ago | |

Let me know if you need assistance

threeboy 2 years ago |

The website is not stored on the laptop - those are more like working files. The HTML files (the "pages" for the website) get edited (in this case Dreamweaver) and UPLOADED to the webhosting/web server via an FTP program (FileZilla for example). The domain name (in this case the .org) points to the web server where the web page files are stored.

To just keep everything as is you would need the following from the old website people:

* The FTP credentials to upload the files. * The webhosting account login to renew the hosting fee (probably monthly or yearly). * The domain name account login (can be the same as webhosting, but not always) to renew the domain name fee (usually yearly).

Dreamweaver is an out of date program used to edit the (HTML) web page files. It's known as a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor where you update the web pages as they look (or an approxmiation of what they look like). You could connect to the website via FTP and download the files to any computer and then edit them with Dreamweaver or learn some basic HTML and edit the HTML files using any text editor (such as notepad).

Like many have said you may better off rebuilding the website in a modern WYSIWYG tool. The website is dated but very simple - copying and pasting the content into a software as a service website provider (WIX, SquareSpace, Weebly) which shouldn't take much time and they are easy to use (drag and drop, WYSIWYG). Then you can login to your domain name account and re-point the DNS to the new website and then cancel the old webhosting and not worry about it anymore.

NoZebra120vClip 2 years ago |

Perhaps you should discuss with this prospective client why she believes that she needs a website at all. Most services in this class do much better with a social media presence and someone to manage it: e.g., Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.

With a Facebook presence alone, she could reach most of her customers, and FB would provide access to help her build content such as multimedia posts, image collections, event announcements, and links out to such things as "Set an Appointment" or whatever.

A website these days is mostly static, passive, and not really on customers' critical path. It is much better for a business's reach if you can get customers to like/follow a social media account or three, especially if you have a savvy manager who will keep it alive, making regular posts, and hopefully even responding to DMs.

boopmaster 2 years ago |

At the risk of sounding rude, you could start by politely declining the request. It's certainly an option. :)

pipeline_peak 2 years ago | |

Seriously, if you have no problem doing this in your spare time for free, then your time isn’t really that valuable.

saaaaaam 2 years ago | | |

Curious attitude. I’ve always found that the people who have the most “valuable” spare time are the most willing to give some of that to help others - because they understand what true value means - which is nothing at all to do with money and everything to do with connection and community.

But yeah, some people value their spare time in dollar amounts, and they’ll never get beyond a hustle and grind “hourly rate” mindset.

jessekv 2 years ago | | |

Even good lawyers will work pro bono sometimes.

Most likely at a much higher (real) marginal cost than a salaried software dev.

uxamanda 2 years ago |

I recently did a similar project for someone who had a long running site. They wanted to keep all the existing pages so that people's bookmarks would still work (while reducing their hosting fees).

In that case, their site was built in Wordpress, and so I grabbed the html and then posted it on GitHub pages (free static hosting). Then I pointed the domain name to Github from the previous host.

This worked well because they didn't care that it was no longer editable (although it could be hand edited without _that_ much trouble) and they had a strong desire to make it aesthetically identical.

Not sure if there is a huge "website update" component in your situation, but if not, you could probably go a similar route.

invalidname 2 years ago | |

Check out https://gdocweb.com/ for this use case. You can generate GitHub Pages sites from Google Docs which means even novices can do that and get the free hosting benefits.

Baeocystin 2 years ago |

So, I just looked at the site. I strongly recommend just rebuilding it, like BadCookie said. Most web views are mobile, and that old page won't play nice with small screens.

mistrial9 2 years ago |

how much media is involved, really?

backing up a laptop is something any competent tech can do for you.. make sure you get copies of media assets, like PNG or JPG. It is possible that you will have to abandon DreamWeaver in the near future, so you have to prepare for that.

In some ways this is simply a documentation task. You can copy the text from each page in an organized way, completely without DreamWeaver.. using the web browser and your favorite editor.

Thristle 2 years ago |

Rebuild the site with wix.com (or other tools) It looks completely static and after the initial setup it is extremely easy to maintain/add to

solardev 2 years ago |

Like others have said, just remake the whole thing on Wix.com or Squarespace, etc. It should only take an hour or three. It's not a complex site.

As a bonus, you'll get modern features like responsiveness (her students can view it on their phones), etc.

It's not worth trying to convert old Dreamweaver templates or anything. Just copy and paste the text and put it into a modern site builder.

rngname22 2 years ago |

Website isn't loading, we are all probably driving up her views way beyond normal. Hope she doesn't have traffic-based pricing.

mminer237 2 years ago | |

Webhero's cheapest plan has 100GB limit and the rest are unlimited. Given the homepage is 100KB, it would take about one million views to possibly exceed a plan.

cuttysnark 2 years ago |

Have a look at SiteSucker[0] - an app that essentially lets you input a url and it will suck all the locally linked files/images etc. into a folder. Once you have the "guts" of the site, you can move it, grep it, edit and update it as needed. Given this appears to be a static site, you could even just open index.html in the browser (file:/// protocol) locally without having to spin up webserver while you develop.

This is the path of least resistance and perhaps the easier route versus rebuilding from scratch for a modern platform—which is also a different price tag. IMO, sucking the static site out without needing to deal with Dreamweaver on an old machine might be reason enough.

I'm not doubting the Dreamweaver claim, but I don't see any of the stink of a site generator—it looks rather simple and handwritten—doesn't even have the generator meta tag listing Dreamweaver—I wonder if Dreamweaver was only used for the FTP interface/connection to upload the files to Webhero.

My TL;DR Advice:

  1. Gain access to the old laptop only to get the FTP upload details/credentials for Webhero. 
  2. Use SiteSucker to get the whole website into a local folder on your machine.
  3. Make changes/updates by editing the files.
  4. Deploy by FTP Upload to Webhero.

[0]- https://ricks-apps.com/osx/sitesucker/index.html

liveoneggs 2 years ago |

https://neocities.org/supporter

https://www.bluehost.com/wordpress

farseer 2 years ago |

This is a small job in Wordpress. Just get hosted Wordpress (a bit expensive) or buy cheap hosting and host your own. After that choose one of the free themes and create a few posts and pages to get the desired results.

whatamidoingyo 2 years ago |

I agree with the others who have said to rebuild the site. Just wanted to pop in and say that I truly miss this era of websites. I got such a massive flashback and feeling of nostalgia.

timnetworks 2 years ago |

CTRL+S saves each page even if you lose FTP access. Markup is great. Websites don't need to be 100MB applications to display some photos and four paragraphs.

[edit] wow that signature made me do a double take

aviat 2 years ago |

Have a look at this,

https://www.concretecms.org/

and hosting, have a look at Hetzner or Scaleways

dlahoda 2 years ago |

run vm with old soft for both of you. make hdd of vm rsync, hdd with files. in case of conflict her files hdd is main.

kylehotchkiss 2 years ago |

Copy paste everything to s3/cloudfront or cloudflare pages. Almost free hosting going forward.

Once you have the folder of code locally, use cursor or ChatGPT to guide you towards making the changes you need.

Use git or learn to use git to safely make bigger changes and learn your way around code. I’d recommend adding tailwind to the mix and slowly integrating as you change or build new things.

Have fun! That’s how a lot of us got into this career path

pipeline_peak 2 years ago |

Please telling me your not doing this for free in your spare time

Nzen 2 years ago | |

I prefer to follow the advice that help for friends is either pro bono or at full market rate [0]. A person helping out for free can justify ending the service without threatening the relationship.

[0] https://neladunato.com/blog/real-friends-pay-full-price/

matheusmoreira 2 years ago | | |

> A person helping out for free can justify ending the service without threatening the relationship.

Be careful. People often respond to that with astonishing ungratefulness.

nickphx 2 years ago | |

Human relationships can be more nuanced and supportive than business centric and transactional..

1. Gain access to the old laptop only to get the FTP upload details/credentials for Webhero. 2. Use SiteSucker to get the whole website into a local folder on your machine. 3. Make changes/updates by editing the files. 4. Deploy by FTP Upload to Webhero.