I’m new to all this, but I hope to find an answer to a question. (My apologies beforehand if I’ve made mistakes in handling all this…)
I have new website that’s hosted by a hosting site. The website is in HTML. I’d like to make one tiny edit (without nagging my former designer).
I want to delete someone’s last name and replace it with their last initial. I tried to go into my website and do this myself (on a page that said “File Manager”–it looks like a file in Text Edit [no code except to indicate quotation marks and apostrophes]). When I did, it changed all the apostrophes and quotation marks to “B”'s on that page. I had to restore the page to the original and give up, because the support people couldn’t help me.
I read a little bit about HTML on here and some other sites. It seems like this shouldn’t be difficult. Do you think I should go into the actual HTML file and delete the name, replace it with the initial, and be sure the code marker immediately follows? (I think it’s: </b><br />
Sorry to be long-winded. I’m a humanities person, not a techie…obviously
Hi,
Thanks. I’m hosting through GoDaddy. I don’t know what system they use for the File Manager. Yesterday, their “Support” only said, “The web designer must have done something with the HTML code that we don’t know about. And maybe a period isn’t really a period.” They had me make the change while they were on the phone, and it still changed the quote marks and apostrophes to B’s. Truthfully, I think they just want to sell me another product.
When I tried to make the change myself, all I did was delete the name and insert a period. I didn’t touch anything in the brackets.
I’d love to fix this myself so as not to have to get back to my former designer.
If you can give me any more advice, or if I can give you more information that might help, please let me know. Thanks again.
I used to host with godaddy, their control panel is a nightmare. It takes forever to get in there and get anything done. That was the main reason I left and moved to host gator.
Anyway, their text editor in the file manager is what is known as a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get). Anytime you do a line break it inserts a <br> tag in the html among other things.
Yes, you should just go into the actual page yourself and make edits there. Once you track down the persons name in the code you should do just fine with the edits. As Stevie mentioned though, be sure not to tamper with any of the html elements shown in brackets.
Obviously you have your username and access to the file manager so you could actually set up a FTP client from your local machine and take care of everything from there. You may want to make other changes in the future so I think it would be worthwhile to set up an FTP.
If your on Windows you could use Notepad to edit the html but there is no syntax highlighting so it might be hard for you to navigate through the code.
I would suggest downloading a free text editor such as Notepad++ or [URL=“http://www.pspad.com/en/”]PSPad since they will highlight the html elements for you. That way you can see them easily and stay away from them.
With an editor and an FTP client (and your account passwords) you can take care of everything yourself and keep a copy of all your files on your local machine.
Just make edits and upload them straight to your site without godaddy’s control panel.
Just a couple of things. Well, thanks for the tip about GoDaddy. It is indeed a nightmare to navigate. I chose it based on my web designer’s recommendation…but I was obviously naive, or ignorant, or something.
Anyway, I did go into the actual page today and tried to make the change in the HTML file, but the same thing happened. I found the name in the code and changed the name, but the quotation marks and apostrophes on that page still turned into B’s on the website.
I didn’t change anything in brackets, just the name.
I have a Mac, so could you recommend an FTP client for it? Or should I just search online? I can use Text Edit on the Mac. I do want to make my own changes in the future.
I more or less understand what you’re telling me, having spent much of the weekend trying to solve this problem.
I really appreciate your taking the time to help me.
Anyway, I did go into the actual page today and tried to make the change in the HTML file, but the same thing happened. I found the name in the code and changed the name, but the quotation marks and apostrophes on that page still turned into B’s on the website.
Are you saying you made edits to the page with the godaddy editor?
If so, the same thing must be happening because those quotation marks are confusing the editor and making it produce erroneous elements.
I have a Mac, so could you recommend an FTP client for it? Or should I just search online?
There are some mac users around here that might be able to help you with that. The only thing I could suggest would be a search for “freeware mac ftp client”.
Ah, well after doing that search myself I see that FileZilla has a mac version.
Yes, exactly. I did make the edits with the godaddy editor (in their text editor and also on the HTML page in their File Manager–I tried both ways). The same problem occurred both times.
What I don’t understand is that all I’m doing is changing: Y******** to Y. So I am not doing anything at all with quotation marks.
After I replied last time, I found the Firezilla FTP, too. So I’ll use that. Sorry to bother you with all the questions. Thanks very much.
The name is in the right-hand column, in the Testimonials. It’s Y******** (about 3 names down).
Right now, the errors, the B’s, aren’t there because I restored it. Since it’s an editing site, I didn’t want to leave the quote marks and apostrophes as B’s.
Please let me know if yo need anything else. Thanks so much.
You will see that the name is nested in that <strong> </strong> tag. As long as you make the edit in text mate and don’t alter the strong tag you should be fine. Then upload the file back to your server and check “overwrite file” when FileZilla asks you what to do.
The portion of the code you want to edit is located on line 147 of that html file
I’ll get TextMate and FireBug next.
Just so you’ll know, Firebug is a web development tool that is an extension for Firefox. It just allows you to make live edits to the code for the sake of testing, it does not make any changes to the actual page on your server.
If you run into any problems just post back and we’ll help where we can.
