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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?

#31

Post by krapp »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #30
p51ngh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come now. Plenty of people on HN insist in AI threads that artists and creatives should only work for passion and love and not corrupt the purity of their craft with the vulgar drive to make money. Suffering and hunger only drive one to greater innovation after all. So why not apply that philosophy to tech as well?

When so much of the web is currently being destroyed by capitalist incentives, shouldn't we go back to the days when quirky nerds just built and maintained websites as a hobby? Why should any of us be paid for any of this when money ruins everything?

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

#32

Post by matheusmoreira »

Nzen wrote: post #28
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/

> 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.

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

#33

Post by matheusmoreira »

krapp wrote: post #31
matheusmoreira wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come now. Plenty of people on HN insist in AI threads that artists and creatives should only work for passion and love and not corrupt the purity of their craft with the vulgar drive to make money. Suffering and hunger only drive one to greater innovation after all. So why not apply that philosophy to tech as well? When so much of the web is currently being destroyed by capitalist incentives, shouldn't we go back to…

The point is you do it for you. Just because you like it. And you also get to do it however you want, whenever you want, with no obligation to anyone else.

Money gets involved when people want you to work on their stuff. Nobody really cares about other people's stuff. So either they do it themselves or they pay other people to get them to work on it. Sometimes even money doesn't get people to do it. I was offered money to develop some features on an open source project and I certainly wanted to take up that offer, the problem is literally days later I got engaged and that overrode all other concerns. I should probably see if the offer's still on the table when life winds down a bit.

> shouldn't we go back to the days when quirky nerds just built and maintained websites as a hobby?

That's what I do. And that's why my website doesn't have a new article every single week. Because I only work on it when I feel like it.

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

#34

Post by sgentle »

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.

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.

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

#37

Post by invalidname »

uxamanda wrote: post #26

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…

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.

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

#38

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

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.

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

#39

Post by dev_0 »

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.

[dead]

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

#40

Post by cuttysnark »

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
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