I have tried for weeks to get info on how to update my web site. I am completely ignorant in IT and the terminolgy can someone give me a step by step, idiots guide, on how to update my site. The site was designed by a couple of degree students who have now moved on. I have tried to contact the web hosting service (Streamline), who were not very helpful but give me this site to try. Please help if you can

Step 1: Figure out what method(s) the server supports for updating your content.

Everything else depends on that, and there are many ways to update content on a web site.

Just reading through the Web Hosting Packages page at Streamline.net, it looks like you could be on a Windows or Linux server, and you may or may not be using SSI, CGI, PHP, ASP, FTP, SSH, basic MS FrontPage transfer, MS FrontPage Extensions, .NET framework, various wizards, various databases, etc.

You'll need to provide a lot more details before anyone here can answer questions.

If they are just static pages (i.e. not using any server side programming or databases) it's as easy as downloading the files you want to update to edit them. Then upload the edited documents and let them overwrite the old versions on the server. Upload/download with FTP or whatever other file transfer mechanism that's available to you.

Note, you should always keep backup copies on your own machine or both on your own machine and on the server.

Thanks Pandy, I half understand. How can I find out what file transfer mechanism's I have. I have windows xp pro, but but I dont know that has a FTP mechanism. As stated before, I am quite ignorant in these matters. Can you help any further ?

It has, but you probably don't want to use it. It's command line only and is called ftp.exe.

You need to find out the login details from your host. FTP address, id and password. The two latter are probably the same as any other id/pw you may have gotten already. The address usually is ftp.yourhost.com and/or ftp.yourdomain.com, but it could be something else.

Then get a FTP program. For instance FileZilla.
http://filezilla-project.org/
Some other free programs.
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/network/fwftp.html

Once you are connected you'll see your HD in one window and the files at your server in the other. Usually you can drag files between the two windows, just as with Explorer, and they'll be downloaded or uploaded. Otherwise check the menus and the context menu for commands.

There are two transfer "modes", binary and Ascii. Use Ascii for everything text. That is txt, html, css, js, pl, php... In short everything HTML related and scripts, everything that's written in plain text. Use binary for everything else, images, movies, zip files, programs and so on. FileZilla has a filter where the common file types are already added so you don't have to bother if there aren't unusual files. Most other programs probably also have this.