A friend of mine has asked me if I can help overhaul her site. My lack of experience tells me both to think about it and to run and hide. (The run and hide because I might not be up to the task, the think about it because it might be a good project for me to use as occasion to learn more web stuff, which I'm always excited about. Ok almost always.)
The url, in case anyone cares to look, is
http://www.pigstuff.com/
The scenario is that her husband did all the design and maintenance, and then left her and is not particularly accessible. The design (as far as appearances go) is horrific, but I think I have the ability to make it look good and to improve the organizational scheme.
What I'm completely uninitiated with regard to, though, is the details of having an online store. (She runs a pig sanctuary and sells pig-themed gifts, and the proceeds go to her snouters.) I have studied a tiny bit of intro to cgi, and at least recognize that that's what I'm seeing. I do not remotely have the confidence to start reorganizing the site without worrying that I'm not going to interface properly with what's there.
It looks like what her ex did for the most part (in many places on the site, including the operation of the store) is to use 3rd party programs. As I write this I realize I need to go back in and scour the programs for comments that might lead me to a website with more detail. But for now, here are the things I'm worried about.
* Do I even want to be involved with a site that is taking credit card information from shoppers? (Ok. that one's rhetorical.) I have no idea if the program is protecting this information from being stolen in transit. (How do I find this out?)
* What (languages, etc.) do I need to study in order to be able to tweak the design? (she said she'd like to have a page with thumbnails of *every* product, whereas right now you get a series of pages that show three products each. I'm having little waking nightmares about this. Like how to create such a page, but have all the links preserve ID information with regard to shopping carts. etc. eeek.
* What would it cost to do this right? (I'm planning to do this as a favor - I'm just refering to other costs. Like besides my time/work.)
She has actually said she'd be okay with using a yahoo service that lets you have a store, which seems like a big step down from what she's got, but if I can't come up with a viable alternative, that might be the way to go. At least for new stuff (she's planning on expanding and having the store feature other animal-themed gifts.) I'm not familiar with what yahoo offers, but I'm figuring it will work right but throw lots of ads at the customer.
I realize that even if I can rise to the task that this would be a huge project. I'm thinking about it, though, because I really love her pigs. I never have any money to donate (and really wish I could), so this would be something I could do to benefit her rescue work.
I'm aware that several of her databases have been wiped out. Guestbook, bulletin board, and I think one other. She wrote to her ex and he said it looked like the server hiccoughed, and that she should write to them for backup files. She said she did (I think twice) but never heard back.
On occasion, she's asked me to do some little update to the site (new pic here, new contact info there) and all she has is the ftp setup, which she's given me access to (passwords and all that). I don't know who the host is, or what services they might offer. I'd sure like to see what's on any control panel that might be available.
Any thoughts appreciated. This is very much *not* a rush job. It's been sitting like this for ages, and so she'll be really happy if I do anything at all, when I get around to it.
I'm almost embarassed to hit the send button on this one, but hey, I don't actually know any of you... (!)
AmyD
