Help with Existing Web Site

Can you provide your website link and/or many screenshots of the problem to help me understand how best to help you?

jekkilekki,

Thanks for your response. I’m sorry, I thought I did.

https://www.amundsonfamilytree.com/amundsonfamilytree.com/Welcome.html

Since my posting, I’ve talked to my son who has a WP website as well. However, on a different host. I downloaded WP from Hostgator.

He tells me that the pages on my web site should be visible under “Pages” in the WP main page. The is nothing there except for the “sample page.”

My son also thought it might be a good thing to get in touch with Hostgator Tech Support since WP was downloaded from their site but I’m not sure they would be able to help me.

Thanks again for you help.

Jay Amundson
Las Vegas, NV

One more thing. When I click on my website at the very top of the WP page it goes to my webpage.

I tried to put a screen shot of the link to my website here for you but I couldn’t figure out.

Sorry

Jay

OK, here’s the problem.

The site you are seeing with your family tree information is actually NOT on WordPress right now. That’s also why there are no Pages except your Sample Page.

You do have WordPress installed, but the site you are accessing is in a subfolder of the WordPress site. Let me try to explain simply:

1. Your WP site is located at https://amundsonfamilytree.com
2. The site you are seeing is located at https://amundsonfamilytree.com/amundsonfamilytree.com

You can see this by trying to login to WP at each place. Click these links to see what I mean:

1. https://amundsonfamilytree.com/amundsonfamilytree.com/wp-admin gives you an error page in the default WordPress Theme – there’s no content in this WP install
2. https://amundsonfamilytree.com/wp-admin takes you to the actual WordPress login screen

This fact, coupled with the fact that every single page in your top menu ends with a .html code at the end seems to indicate that the pages you are seeing are hard-coded HTML pages that were built in iWeb and have not yet been transferred over to your WordPress installation.

Once more:

1. In your URL, the /amundsonfamilytree.com/ looks like a subfolder that would be stored on your FTP and contain all of the original hard-coded, iWeb-built HTML files like Welcome.html
2. Your actual WordPress installation URL SHOULD look like this: https://www.amundsonfamilytree.com/Welcome There should be no extra folder in there, and there should be no .html on the end of your Page names

You have a few options to fix this – both of which are relatively easy, but slightly “techie” and will probably require some troubleshooting:

1. Log in to your FTP client (I use Filezilla) if you know your FTP credentials (should have been sent to you in an email from Hostgator)
2. Confirm that there is a subfolder in there called /amundsonfamilytree.com/ (you should also see your WordPress installation folders like /wp-content/ etc
3. Open the folder and start opening the files one-by-one in a text editor like Notepad++
4. Copy out ALL the code from each page
5. Login to your WordPress site (at https://amundsonfamilytree.com/wp-admin) and "Create New Page" from the sidebar menu
6. Click on the "Text" tab in the editor window
7. Paste in all your code in the code window there and Publish the Page

You should now have your first page from the old site directly imported into WordPress. (Alternatively, if you don’t know your FTP login credentials, you can right-click on any of your pages that are currently online and select "View Source" then copy THAT code and follow steps 5-7 above).

Troubleshooting:

When you copy and paste the old code, there’s a good chance that your links and images will be broken because they are still referencing the old “subfolder” locations and files. You might need to go back in and update all your links and images. (Your son can probably help out).

Also, it seems like there is a redirect from your main WordPress site https://amundsonfamilytree.com/ to the subfolder site https://amundsonfamilytree.com/amundsonfamilytree.com. This may be something that Hostgator set up for you, so you might contact them to see about fixing it when you’re all done transferring your content from your original static HTML to your new WordPress installation.

Hope that helps you get started. If any of it sounds confusing, feel free to post back here, or ask your son since he’s familiar with WordPress.

The main problem, like I said, is that your site ISN’T actually in the WP install now. It’s in a subfolder. You have to transfer all that content from the HTML files into WP.

I wish there was a faster/easier way, but I don’t know of one right off hand.

THANK YOU, jekkilekki!!

I really appreciate all the time and effort you put into this. It’s approaching dinner time here so I’ll have to leave it for morning.

I have read though what you sent a couple of times and I think I’m beginning to see what the issues are.

I remember a few years back when I was on the phone with Hostgator and I asked about the website being in the URL box twice and the tech said that it makes no difference and he was right until now. He said he could change it back but I told him that as long as it works not to worry about it.

I guess the first question I have. How about I have HG correct the problem so there is only one amundsonfamilytree? Would that work? I suspect not or you would have mentioned it.

Jay

If you could get into your FTP, what you’d be looking at would be something like the following screenshot: Sample AmundsonFamilyTree.com Screenshot

As you can see, you have one folder on your website titled /amundsonfamilytree.com/ that contains all your website’s static .html files.

Below that are the actual WordPress installation files: /wp-content/ and so on.

Simply asking HG to remove your /amundsonfamilytree.com/ folder OR to transfer the content from there into the /wp-content/ folder won’t work.

Although /wp-content/ will contain all your files, images, and text for a website, the folder (WordPress itself) does not store static HTML files. Rather, all your code must be stored in the WP database (similar to an MS Access Database, or more simply, similar to an MS Excel Spreadsheet). Your Post content is called FROM the database when you click on a certain page and rendered (created) into a full webpage when you click on a certain link.

Think of it in this way:

If you have an Excel Spreadsheet that represents your WP website, then:

1. Cell A1 through Z1 contain all the category headings for different parts of your website
2. Cell A1 for example, might be “PHP Index page code”
3. Cell B1 might be “PHP single post code”
4. Cell C1 might be “PHP comment code”
5. Cell D1 might be “CSS style code”
6. Cell E1 might be “User created content” (this is what you typed)

When WP renders a page, it will go to Cell B2 to call the code to create the structure of the page, and call Cell C2’s comment code (if comments are turned on), and call Cell D2’s style code to make your page look pretty. Then, it will also call the user written content from Cell E2 (or Cell E27 – depending on WHICH page of the site you are looking at). It will put all of these together at once, dynamically, and render the website as you see it.

This may be a simplified explanation, but the point is, WP has a distributed code system. Each of the parts of a page must be called uniquely and separately from one another and rendered dynamically to create the website.

This is nice because it means that you only need to write the basic page code, comment code, style code, etc, ONCE, and store it in a singular location to be referenced whenever ANY page is created. Comparing this to the old static HTML pages created by FrontPage and iWeb where HTML code is created for EVERY individual page, it’s easy to see why WP and similar CMS systems (Content Management Systems) are so useful these day.

You might have created 100s of HTML pages (even just copying and pasting the same code between them) previously, but with WP, you only create ONE HTML page (with PHP as a helper) that is then referenced and dynamically called only when you need that particular structure.

This kind of system frees you up as the user to focus only on WRITING, and not on worrying about code, page structure, or site elements being the same across all pages.

Does that help?

All of this to say, THE REASON asking “HG to correct the problem so there is only one amundsonfamilytree” folder WON’T work is because the website rendering systems are completely different.

You need to copy OUT your content from the OLD static system, and paste it IN page-by-page to the NEW database system.

(At least that’s how it appears from here.)

Make sense?

Thanks jekkilekki, I figured that you would have mentioned it before if it was a viable option. I just wanted confirmation. I do have a vague idea what what’s going on now. I talked to my son and he said it was over his head too. I’m going to call HG and see what they say. If they can’t, I’ll see if I can find some one in town to help. I do have a few connections but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen them. I also like the challenge because I love learning something new.

I’m going to try to have the “new” site up and running in the next week or so as we are leaving for CA for the holidays.

Thanks again for your help. I’ll let you know what happens.

Merry Christmas!

Jay

I understand the fun of a new challenge as well. Good luck getting everything sorted. Be patient if it takes longer than expected. And Merry Christmas to you as well!~