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/
The hardest part technically seems like it will be transferring the domain name.
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.
Macromedia 2004! Wowzers
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.)
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.
Surely something like this should already exist.
Current setup is too old to try and work with and you may save time doing from scratch.
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Dreamweaver is an out of date program used to edit the (HTML) web page files.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.
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.
But yeah, some people value their spare time in dollar amounts, and they’ll never get beyond a hustle and grind “hourly rate” mindset.
Most likely at a much higher (real) marginal cost than a salaried software dev.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[edit] wow that signature made me do a double take
and hosting, have a look at Hetzner or Scaleways
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
[0] https://neladunato.com/blog/real-friends-pay-full-price/
Be careful. People often respond to that with astonishing ungratefulness.