I was contracted to add an image slider to a client's existing website. I did this with them by accessing their server and adding the javascript and editing the HTML directly on the server. Everything was working fine for some months, but the client recently made some changes using Coffee Cup software and this has overwritten all the pages removing the slider HTML code and changed all the IDs.

I don't use Coffee Cup software but the client wants me to fix their mess now - without payment, so any quick tips would be much appreciated regarding adding the HTML and Javascript using Coffee Cup. The slider code is Flexslider 2 located at WooThemes.

Thanks for your time,

G Lange

Place the slider in it's own page and use an iframe on the page they want it to show. This way they won't destroy everything with one click, just the iframe code which you can put back in seconds.

And definitely don't do it for free, if they broke it, they need to pay to get it fixed as what they did was just sheer stupid lol. What they did had nothing to do with the software either if that's what they are thinking, it had to do with them not being smart enough to download the pages "prior" to editing so that they had the most recent copy. That's a costly mistake on anyones part and you should definitely not have to pay for their carelessness. Just my 10 cents.

I bet that was a website built with VSD

If you add anything using an external program, you have to give VSD all the files etc.

Failing to do it that way (ie) uploading separately with FTP will ALWAYS result in it being overwritten every time an edit is made in VSD and then uploaded.

Just one question from me, as a professional (you not me) charging for your work, had you informed your client that uploading edits from VSD or probably any other WYSIWYG program would result in this happening. ??

Not sure about if they used CC HTML editor but i guess the same might apply

Jo Ann can you answer that one, so they know for the future

The site could have been built with any website builder, CC or not. If you edit an old copy of a page, not downloading the current one first, then naturally the changes will be overwritten. I've done this myself some times, mainly because I'm working on two different computers.

Thank you Inger, that clarifies my point

I only quote VSD as you know because as an amateur its all i know how to use

Fortunately 4 years in I would have known about the overwrite but as this is a CC forum, and the thread related to a CC user's website, we dont know how knowledgeable he or she was, when asking a professional to make changes to it.

Inger can the professional ADD the necessary to the clients PC in some way so it does not occur again ?

I know i could if it was in VSD, or i would have cloned the VSD website and added the new part as a separate unit so it never got overwritten (but all the category tabs and links would be edited to cross between the two)

website.com/mainwebsite
website.com/subsiderywebsite

Thank you for all the replies, discussion and suggestions.

I didn't know the site was created in VSD, as I was only told that it was created using Coffee Cup software. My mistake was that they had already extracted 2 hours of free work out of me and I didn't get a chance to look into all the Coffee Cup software available. Essentially I was brought in to do a job that the person responsible for updating the site was not able to do, and she was very hostile and generally rude towards me throughout the whole job. In the future I hope I will recognise such situations and respectfully decline the work.

The owner of the website is a builder, and he told me today that it was the same as him laying a concrete slab and a month later the edge falls off which would be his responsibility because of the poor quality work. I explained that it was much more like laying a great quality concrete slab, but only getting paid a third of your usual rate for it, and a month later another builder turns up and smashes the concrete slab to smithereens and then they both decide to blame you, the original builder, and demand you fix it for free. I also explained that it didn't seem normal to overwrite the entire site just to make a simple edit.

My next question is: How does one load the site, including the slider, into VSD so as not to have everything overwritten? If there are any instructions available please point me in the right direction. I'm most worried that VSD seems to change class IDs every time a page is saved.

Thanks again for all the great help.

PS: Sorry Eric, the iframes solutions requires me to be involved with every edit, so it's out of the question for both myself and the client.

Hiya glange,

In order to edit a site using VSD they would need to provide you with all the files that VSD uses as you cannot import pages or load pages into it outside of the .vnu file that the program creates. They should have a file with that extension .vnu as well as a directory with all the needed files that they can give you. Make sure the site was indeed created with VSD as we don't have a llink so we cannot concretely tell you it was.

If you have a link to the current site, we can definitely tell you if it was created with VSD or not.

The problem is, if it was built with VSD, then it's 100% not your fault as it was their responsibility to tell you what was used to created it and all pertinent information you needed in order to edit it etc.

If it was built in VSD, tell them they need to provide you with all the files (or upload them for you to download etc.) so you can edit it properly with the correct program.

Provide us a link and we'll tell you for sure if it was done with VSD.

Thanks Jo Ann, the site is http://gcluxuryvintagecarhire.com.au/. They emailed me today to say that it was created using CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer 7.

Do you know if there is a way to add custom html and javascript into a VSD 7 website so that it won't be overwritten with each edit in VSD?

@ Viv:

Since I'm not using VSD, I can't reply thoroughly, but if you and someone else were working on the same site, you would both have to have VSD installed, and you would both have to download the current pages before editing.

@ glange:

VSD is short for Visual Site Designer, and you drag and drop the various bits of content to where you want them. Any changes made outside this programme will be overwritten the next time someone makes a change within the programme. So actually, whatever you do to edit the site will be lost when the site builder launches a new update. Even if he/she downloads the current page, which contains new stuff created by you, it can't be imported into VSD just like that. Viv may know of a workaround here, but since I don't use VSD, my knowledge stops there. But the person who built the site should have known this, so it will be his/her fault, not yours.

If, however, the site was built with the CC HTML Editor, it's a bit different, but still not your fault that the site builder overwrote your changes. In the HTML Editor you're working with html/css code, and the pages can be opened in any website building programme, like Dreamweaver or anything else code based. So if you edited a page with something that the site builder wasn't able to do, it's his/her darned duty to download that page afterwards in order to have the newest update for later changes. Failing to do that is the site builder's responsibility, and any hostility and rudeness towards you are completely out of place. You have been kind to them, and they have made the mess, so they'll have to fix it themselves or pay you for doing it for them.

You can print this out and show them