Ask HN: I bought a website, how do I edit it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I bought a website, how do I edit it?

6 pointselsalazar12 comments

I recently bought a small business and the seller gave me the info to keep the domain active and then gave me a bunch of files for the website. I told the hosting company "I have these files, how do I load up the website?" They said go to this folder and upload your files. After I did that, the website was up and running. Now I want to change the website, but don't know how to get started or where to get information. Was hoping someone here could point me in the right direction. TIA

View on HN

Websites are coded in html, styled with css, and made dynamic/interactive with javascript.

When you right click on a Web page, such as the one you are reading now, and select View Source you can see the html, css and javscript that your browser reads in order to display the page.

Anyone can learn about these technologies and a good starting point would be Mozilla Developer Network (MDN for short) where they have all sorts of documentation on how to get started and what is the state of the art.

Of course, there is a lot more to it but if you just copied/pasted some files on a Web server and it worked this is all you need to know for now.

Let's think about it.

If your website runs by uploading the files, that means the content must be determined by the files.

Use youtube/chatgpt: - "how do static websites work" - "how to code files on my computer"

Step 1. ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP! (copy the folder somewhere safe). Or use git - you can learn the basics in 15 minutes.

Step 2. Edit the files. 1) First, you need a way to edit the files. Use Cursor. 2) If it's some text you want to change, use Ctrl+F to find the text & replace it with your thing. 3) If it's something else, you can ask the AI to change it for you.

Step 3. After changing your files, you can upload them to the hosting company again. You should see the changes!

Hope that is enough to get started!

What hasn't been explicitly said so far is that those files you uploaded can be edited just like any other file. Open a text editor of your choice, and change things.

- If you want to change the words, edit the words in the HTML files, which are the file that end in .htm or .html.

- If you want to change the colors, look for a "style" section in the .html files, or files ending in .css, and colors will be in there, probably in a 6 character code that represents the RGB colors. There will also be a lot of other stuff in there - it all controls the look and feel of your pages.

- If you want to change the formatting, change the HTML tags around the words.

- If you want a completely different layout, you'll need to really learn HTML and CSS.

To learn HTML/CSS so that everything you see in these files makes some sense, go to the sites others have already mentioned, or just use one of the free AI chatbots. Paste in a file, ask question on how to change it, and you'll get reasonable answers. While the chatbots are imperfect, they will work fine for you at this beginner level.

Once you make your changes on your local system, you can open your local files in your browser to confirm they look as you desire. Then re-upload them just like you already did, replacing the existing files, and your changes are live.

How much time and/or money do you want to spend on this project?

Depending on how complicated the website you bought was (i.e. whether it's just a simple informational site, or some complicated interactive app) it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months or years to learn how to maintain it.

If you just want a simple site that you can edit on your own, it's probably easier to just put it on a page builder like wix.com or squarespace.com.

If you want to keep the current look & feels that you have, though, then you'd either have to learn or work with it or pay someone to do it (or teach you).

You can start with the basics, learning HTML and CSS from whatever free resources you want, like https://www.freecodecamp.org/. If your site is interactive, you'll eventually need to learn Javascript too, which can be quite a bit harder.

If you want to provide some contac info, I'd be glad to jump on a call with you to take a deeper look and tell you how it works, etc. (no charge)

Did you buy a small business that is not software/tech but just has a informational/marketing website ? If yes, then it is most likely a simple "static website" with pages in HTML (what renders on the browser). It may also be something like a .php file that is easily available to render on many web hosts.

To help you more, you need to first tell us what is the file extension (is it ending with .html or something like .php or something else). We can then help you more on how to edit them.

The file extensions and file or folder names should tell you what kind of website you're dealing with. Once you know that, it becomes a question of editing that specific kind of website.

It might have some built-in editing functionality, as 'markx2 suggests. Or it might require editing code, in which case hiring someone to do it for you, as 'nobankai says, would get the job done quickest.

But if you want to learn how to do it yourself, you should also be able to find editor software and tutorials with a targeted search for that kind of website.

One question is ... do you want to spend the time on this or the business. Maybe hire a company (or maybe better the tech family friend) to maintain it for you?

Otherwise there are some good technical answers but in short if you are not paying you'd have to learn. Maybe buy a second domain (some are $1) to practice on.

You don't need files, you need a username and a password.

Then try going to https://your-domain/cpanel to see if they use that.

Or use an FTP client to connect.

Don't try to do it yourself. Hire someone to take a look and explain things to you. You might end up making things worse, such as taking the site down and/or losing data.

you can learn how to edit it, or you can ask someone who knows to edit it for you

Dm me

If you don't know the answer, it's time to hire an engineer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com