So I have a friend who would like me to take over updates and all other activities for his website…The problem is, the old designer won’t return any form of contact, be it phone, email…nothing. What can he do? I would actually like to have him move it over to dreamhost, but we’d have to actually get all the information first…
Any ideas?
Thanks a bunch!
Ryan
Unfortunately, your friend’s situation is not that unusal. While it makes it easier to have the cooperation of the site designer, it is by no means necessary.
Does your friend have the username/password for the account hosting his site? If so, just login and ftp the site’s files to your machine. If not, you may have to save each page from the web, and be a little creative in deducing how it all works, possibly doing a little scripting replacements.
If your friend doesn’t have the control of his domain, then that is a bit different.
If your friend has control of his domain, the old designer is not needed; just grab the file from the web via wget or “save as”, arrange for new hosting, change the DNS for the domain to the new host’s servers, upload the site’s file, and you are done!
–rlparker
Thank you so much, I’m not one hundred percent sure if he has username/password (my inkling is no), but I will pass this info on to him…
Again, thank you so much…
Cheers,
Ryan
Don’t hate me cause it’s Flash…
Yes, unless it’s script/database-driven or really huge like having hundreds of pages, you should be able to retrieve the whole site from the web.
When I take over a website, I’d usually make sure I have copied everything BEFORE hand. Your COMPETITORS are not supposed to help you out, and even peer courtesy has a limit.
I came across cases in which the new designers/hosts don’t even know how to transfer the domain away to another registrar. And heh, I’m not going to teach a competitor my trade secrets!
To have lived is not enough for them, they have to talk about it. – Samuel Beckett
You may want to check out http://www.httrack.com/, this will copy everything that is publicly viewable and linked from a web site.