I have used Terapad to host my website (Motorcycle Info Pages - Home / Ducati Multistrada 1200 - MTS1200.info redirect) to date but have just seen a message at the head of the User Control Panel re them having closed shop ("Important Update: Please visit www.terapad.com" [follow link for full details of the situation]). No idea when this message was added, strange that I have only just seen it despite updating my site regularly and very worrying that apparently my site may cease to exist any time now! "...Our advice to all Terapad website owners is that they should make arrangements to use a new provider immediately. Please note – Terapad is a proprietary platform - to the best of our knowledge there is no way to export a site from Terapad. If you need to remove the content you will need to copy and paste." This is really worrying to learn, my site comprises some 460+ page, hundreds of photos/images distributed through a fairly complex directory structure - there's no way I could 'move' my site by the copy and paste method! I should explain that the site is edited via an online system....a choice I made at the time of starting the site as I only I could only make use of a borrowed laptop and not my own PC whilst laid up long term after a bad bike crash. I would be grateful for any help/advice from web designer/publishing experts as to whether there's something I can do, maybe a look at the source code for a page on the site may provide clues as to the 'proprietary platform' used to serve the pages/site?.....and so possibly a means to copying/downloading the site in its entirety for hosting elsewhere? Fingers and everything else crossed that someone out there will have an answer!
Not an expert by any means but there are plenty of tools available to download entire site. At least you'll have your content. No backup option on a hosted site is pretty poor. Best of luck!
Thanks Bob @BZ Thanks, something I hadn't thought to look for until someone pointed me in that direction also. Upload of site in course right now thanks to: HTTrack Website Copier - Free Software Offline Browser (GNU GPL) ....if that works that'll be the panic over! And if not there's still the possibility of looking at similar apps the possible bugbear could be the so called 'proprietary platform' which I guess is probably some sort of database system so traditional file/folder/directory structures may not apply.
Andy, give me an email. I can help you take a copy of your site, and also suggest alternate hosts. I've not used your software though, so transfer to and restructure on a new site may need someone elses brain cells.
Thanks John but first hurdle past....I have a copy of the site thanks to the software I mention above but due to the content management type system used by Terapad, with most of the content stored in a database and pages being rendered on demand based on a template structure conversion to a traditional files/folders/directory structure will, looking at the content I have, take weeks! So the next hurdle............can I find software out there that will do the job or a hosting company that I can send the content to on DVD for them to import. Not so keen on the second option as I really would like to take this opportunity to get back to what I know and am familiar with i.e. produce/edit content/pages here on my PC, good old fashioned HTML and upload/FTP to the host server.
Glad you've got your content at least. In terms of hosting, take a look at Squarespace. If it's a fit, they're hard to beat.
Thanks again......yes a relief that I have copies of the content now but looking at it that was the easy part........reconfiguring / restructuring to upload to another host in a format I can maintain and edit myself looks like a major issue. The format, maybe I should say structure, of the website as saved by WinHTTrack (and presumably as found on the old Terapad server) is far from user friendly from the point of view of maintaining the site e.g. updating pages - all 550+ html pages are in the same folder and the naming convention meaningless to me. Still not sure (not had time to investigate) what if any the options for 'rebuilding' the site are - sorting it out manually will be a mammoth task involving at least renaming every html file, then sorting into sub directories/folders.....and the bit that I'm not even sure is practical manually, changing all internal page links to take account of new file names and locations! Lots of thinking and research to do!!
Not a fan of wordpress but it will import html. Others must have similar tools, have you investigated?
Yes, I don't want to get stuck with another online type service........spent a lot of time researching, looking at for instance offline CMS software but come up with no answers. Trouble is you need a certain level of knowledge/expertise to be able to consider the right search terms and when looking at potential solutions without that certain level of knowledge/expertise it's pretty much (so far anyway) for someone like myself difficult to be sure whether something's going to do the job or not. I've tried a couple of free trial offline/desktop CMS apps with no joy and I tried importing the site to MS Frontpage but that failed (admittedly MSFP version 2003)
:Sour:Andy, like many others here who have responded to you and your + our dilemma as users of your brilliant site, I hope you can get this back to where you want it to be. Good luck in your quest. I had literally noticed yesterday evening that your site had a potential problem and was planning to alert you like others already have this morning. Fingers crossed for you my friend and keep the faith
Thanks Tony......I'm working on a temporary solution right now and should have a temporary version of the site available very soon now.
