The guy who built this site used WordPress, and then he (for some reason) took the codebase off of WP and left it in the godaddy File Manager. Now the site owner is asking me to make changes to the site, and I'm wondering if I can re-deploy this site to WP so that I can easily edit it.

For instance, if I want to edit the footer, I have to edit each of the 24 pages of the site, instead of just editing the footer once and having it apply to all. This codebase has a lot of unintelligible blocks of code because it wasn't meant to be worked on like this, it's supposed to be managed via WP.

Is there any way I can get this site back onto WP so that I can work on it much more easily?

The guy who built this site used WordPress, and then he (for some reason) took the codebase off of WP and left it in the godaddy File Manager. Now the site owner is asking me to make changes to the site, and I'm wondering if I can re-deploy this site to WP so that I can easily edit it.

For instance, if I want to edit the footer, I have to edit each of the 24 pages of the site, instead of just editing the footer once and having it apply to all. This codebase has a lot of unintelligible blocks of code because it wasn't meant to be worked on like this, it's supposed to be managed via WP.

Is there any way I can get this site back onto WP so that I can work on it much more easily?

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Share Improve this question asked Feb 4, 2020 at 21:46 ian-campbellian-campbell 10122 bronze badges 4

• 2 If there's no database, you're basically going to have to start from scratch. Sorry Ian. – Tony Djukic Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 22:24
• All good, I figured as much. Thanks Tony – ian-campbell Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 22:29
• In earnest, I have seen it done before where someone converted a really problematic WordPress site (because of the theme and the page builder that came bundled with it) into a static HTML site. But, I mean, that was an extremely worst case scenario that resulted in that conversion. I can't imagine why else the previous developer would have done that. – Tony Djukic Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 22:31
• 1 @ian-campbell I hope you're telling the client what you're doing and charging accordingly for the extra time spent, they should know what this other person did, and what you're having to do – Tom J Nowell ♦ Commented Feb 5, 2020 at 0:20

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Content

If you have no database copy/backup, and the site is entirely static HTML, then you're going to have to populate it by hand. You have a lot of copy pasting to do

Theme and Styling

You'll need to take a minimal theme such as underscores, and copy over the styling and HTML, plumb in the post loop and important PHP such as the header and footer function calls etc

WordPress has several parts: the 'core code', themes that display content from the database, plugins that add functionality, and the database that stores all of the content.

If you have the database, then the content is still there. Install a new WP instance, point it to the current database (or make a copy of the database and point the new install to that new database). Using one of the base 'twenty' themes, you can see how the site looks.

Change the look by changing the theme. Add functionality by adding plugins.

If the database does not contain current site info, then you have a bit more work: you'll need to add posts/pages to the database with the site's current (non-WP) content.

Make sure you use strong passwords for the install (database), set up a new WP admin (remove the old one so the prior consultant can't access). Consider (strongly) changing hosting and FTP access to the new area to prevent the prior consultant from accessing.

All this can happen while the old site is still active. Just set up WP in a new folder in the public_html folder. When the new site is done, point the domain to the new subfolder; then use a Search/Replace plugin to change the developement URLs to the live URLs.