Can't login to recently purchased cms based website.

Don't know how to edit/manage recently aquired site

[fruteloop]

Hi, I just joined here yesterday (I think) and now I have run into a problem I really hope someone can help me with. (Anybody else awake? lol)

I just bought a business website to add to my adventures I am pursueing right now - their live help is not available right now. I am trying to figure out how to edit it, "get into it". I have access to stuff about members and their actions and standings and all - but I want to work on the site itself. The help file is not much help. It says:

"Installation of this site is quite simple. If your server is compatible with our setup system then you only need to change permissions on one file and run the setup. If your server isn't compatible with our setup then your steps will include editing the common.php file, setting up the database tables and uploading the site"

Well, the site is already up and online. It is being hosted (they provided hosting to begin with, but you can change it.) I have another business website I created that I did thru yahoo small business. With this one, I don't know where to go or what to do to get to the "file manager" as yahoo calls it.

I really don't understand what is going on. Does this make sense? Can anyone help?

Please.....

Thank you

[bill]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld fruteloop.

It sounds like you're trying to access the control panel of some sort of CMS. If that's the case you'll have to ask the people who sold you the site.

If you have FTP access to the server then you could just access the files directly, but again here you would need that server access data from the people who sold you the site.

[fruteloop]

Thank you! I guess I will have to wait to talk to them....

[BradleyT]

Like Bill said, it sound like you bought a CMS (content management system) solution.

Since you mentioned a "common.php" file I would say be very careful when editing any pages if you aren't familiar with PHP. One minor mistake can bring your entire site down.

Hopefully they have some type of template file for layout that is seperate from the code so you can modify the design without worrying about messing up the code.

[fruteloop]

:O

I really hope they have something like that too, because I do not know about php. I just have to make sure to do a back up and if I mess anything up I can just put it back. (right?)

[LeChuck]

You should probably download the site and test any changes locally.

It's ok for most sites to edit them live if you know php, but if you don't then you should test your changes where they don't matter (offline).

Sounds like the seller should probably have given you a better overview of what you bought.

[mack]

If you have aquired a site with a cms be sure to get the password details from the old owner then change them :)

Mack.