inherited my company website

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paris_pepper
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inherited my company website

#1 Post by paris_pepper » 2014-12-02 20:19

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to File Zilla and development in general. I have a strong background in designing websites all using some web design editors but no coding experience so when my company's website consultant recently quit, the company website was landed in my lap and now I need to make changes to the site. The consultant suggested that I make a copy of the site and work from the copy but I'm not sure how to do that since I need to work on the original...any help would be much appreciated.

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boco
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Re: inherited my company website

#2 Post by boco » 2014-12-02 20:54

You could download the website files (and, if used, database dumps) and create your local development environment. Apache, PHP (if used), MySQL (if used). There are ready-to-go packages like XAMPP available.

Rule #1: You never work on the original, but on a duplicate.
Rule #2: You always have a backup of the complete site.
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paris_pepper
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Re: inherited my company website

#3 Post by paris_pepper » 2014-12-02 21:09

Thanks Boco,

I understand making a copy to my computer. This site was made in ancient code, like from the 90's. But what I can't understand if I always work from a copy how do I make my changes live on the site?

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boco
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Re: inherited my company website

#4 Post by boco » 2014-12-04 19:13

But what I can't understand if I always work from a copy how do I make my changes live on the site?
By simply uploading your changed local files to the web copy, overwriting the old ones. From your 'ancient code' statement, I guess we can forgot databases.
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FTP connection problems? Please read Network Configuration.
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audiopro
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Re: inherited my company website

#5 Post by audiopro » 2014-12-05 08:34

paris_pepper wrote:Thanks Boco,

I understand making a copy to my computer. This site was made in ancient code, like from the 90's. But what I can't understand if I always work from a copy how do I make my changes live on the site?
Many people, these days, only have the server code to work on and do not make a local back up. This is fine until your server crashes, gets hacked, gets deleted or some other disaster befalls it. Make a backup copy of your entire website on your local machine and then make another full backup. The second one, is the one to work on and upload files from as you change them. It is always a good idea to make further backups of individual files before you start any editing.

If you are inexperienced, it is inevitable that at some point you will mess up a section and not have a clue how to put it right. In this case, you simply roll back to the last working version and then start editing again.
Morecambe - Where the sun goes at night

paris_pepper
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Re: inherited my company website

#6 Post by paris_pepper » 2014-12-05 13:03

Thanks Everyone, that makes so much better sense now. Have a fabulous weekend!

jennypierce
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Re: inherited my company website

#7 Post by jennypierce » 2015-02-01 18:30

be very careful come monday! if you make a coding mistake you might bring down the site. Make sure you dont overwright the functional site"!!

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