Where to start with an inherited website?

  • Sorry for a VERY green message, I am a quick learner, I promise!

    I have just taken over from someone in our small company and I will now be responsible for our website.

    The problem is that our website is TERRIBLE.

    I want to start from scratch as the current one contains all sorts of funny bugs and issues, as well as looking like it’s from the 1990s.

    How do I go about starting from scratch, but leaving our current site intact until the new version is usable?

    I am computer literate and keen to learn, but as far as building websites go I am a complete novice. Fingers crossed you can help me.

    Janna ??

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  • A lot depends on whether the site is actively being updated, say by Posts or Comments from visitors or logged-in users. If not, your job will be a lot easier.

    Assuming you want to use WordPress to build your replacement web site, I would install it in a new subdirectory where no one but you would normally see it (be sure to turn off Search Engine indexing when you install WordPress in this subdirectory), and gradually build it the way you want there.

    Once you are ready to “go live”, follow these instructions:
    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory#Using_a_pre-existing_subdirectory_install

    Only thing to add to those instructions is the need to rename the existing home page of the old site. Typically, index.htm/.html/.php

    The nice part about this approach is you can easily Backout if your new site fails.

    The normal way to to this is with a development site. To do this you’d start off wither either a sub-domain of your site (like test.mysite.com) or a subfolder (mysite.com/test/). A sub-folder will be easier to start off with until you are more experienced with hosting and configuration.

    For the purposes of this example, I’ll use sub-folders, but you could do the same which ever way you go.

    Firstly, you’ll need to install WordPress in the sub-folder, and that will give you a blank installation that you can start with.

    From there you’d add a theme and whatever plugins that you need and sart to set up your content.

    When you’re all done, you can transfer the site to the live site it will be your “new” website.

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