CM CLUB: Advice about my website, start again or recreate the same?

[looneytune]

Hi again

Feel like I'm asking a million and one questions recently! lol

Basically, I built my website when I first started childminding over 3 years ago but when I changed PC's some time ago, I lost the files for it It was a big website so not happy and therefore haven't updated for a very long time. I did try grabbing the files from the website itself but the structure had all gone so I've finally decided to start again from scratch.

Now......do I rebuild the same again as I know I get a lot of enquiries from it and always get good feedback (one person booked me from seeing it but I insisted they met me before deciding) OR do I take this opportunity to have a whole new look???? Part of me thinks stick with what I know works etc. BUT the other part thinks a new look would be good.

Oh....what to do, what to do.

What are your thoughts???

LT x

?

My view is that a new look every few years is good. You can redesign it based on what you know works, removing things that aren't needed and adding things.
Your current site does not seem to display correctly in Firefox (according to your sitestats, 546 visitors used Mozilla), the code could do with a bit of tidying and uses Tables rather than CSS.
However, I'm a techy as you know, thus I tend to make minor changes to my site regularly and major changes every few years.
Your stats are not very detailed, so you could update that by using Google Analytics instead of the Bravenet Counter - Google Analytics would then show you which pages were the most popular, least popular etc.

I suppose it really depends on if you have the time, and if you feel it needs a overhaul.
I can't see why you can't just update some of the files - can you not FTP in to the site to obtain all the files?

Tiscali says you can FTP in to the site - see here for a download of FTP software plus what username/pass to use.
Using the FTP software you can transfer all files, often including directory structure (or you may need to do each directory separately). Then you can edit them on your home PC and upload them back again.
But you know all that really, don't you

Cheers Nick - as you know, I don't really know what I'm doing as never trained but it sort of worked ok (when I was getting others to ask me to do websites I really wanted to train properly but never got the time, at least I earnt a bit of extra pocket money from playing around ) The tables are thanks to Frontpage I think!!

I did grab the files from the site and try to upload again but there seems to be problems with the way it's FTP'd which is why I decided to start from scratch as it doesn't take long to copy and paste

I think I'll have a think about a new look then but maybe keep the logo as that's what people recognise iyswim.