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

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

#21

Post by saaaaaam »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #20
boopmaster wrote: post #15

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

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

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.

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

#22

Post by joemazerino »

BadCookie wrote: post #7

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.

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

Macromedia 2004! Wowzers

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

#23

Post by pipeline_peak »

saaaaaam wrote: post #21
pipeline_peak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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” mi…

Touching, have kids, own an house and say that again.

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

#24

Post by threeboy »

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.

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

#25

Post by p51ngh »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #23
saaaaaam wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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” mi…

Touching, have kids, own an house and say that again.

Maybe don’t have any of those if you can’t afford?

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

#26

Post by uxamanda »

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.

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

#27

Post by pipeline_peak »

p51ngh wrote: post #25
pipeline_peak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touching, have kids, own an house and say that again.

Maybe don’t have any of those if you can’t afford?

The point I’m trying to make is the majority of people wouldn’t have the time left.

You raspberry pi guys act like anything is possible and energy is infinite.

Not everyone is bill gates

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

#28

Post by Nzen »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #19

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

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/

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

#29

Post by solardev »

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.

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

#30

Post by matheusmoreira »

p51ngh wrote: post #25
pipeline_peak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touching, have kids, own an house and say that again.

Maybe don’t have any of those if you can’t afford?

Yeah abstain from having a life and a family just so you can afford to spend your days hacking on other people's websites for free as a hobby or something.
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