Existing website question

[Venge]

First off let me qualify myself as someone who is completely new to web design, however I did spend a few days years back trying to figure out HTML. Didn't get very far...
Anyway, here is the situation. My brother put up and maintained a family website for us. Sadly he has passed away suddenly.
The job of figuring out how to access and keep the site going has fallen to me. I checked in the source code of the site and saw "Information generated and read by Xara Webstyle." in the very first line. That is what led me here.
I was looking to see how possible it would be for me to buy this same program to access our site and sort of reverse engineer the site back into a copy of Webstyle so I can use it to edit the site.
Now I realize Webstyle has been phased out and replaced by Xara Web Designer so I am assuming I won't be able to buy a copy of Webstyle.
How would I best go about being able to get out existing website ? Will it be as easy as buying Web Designer and importing our website code into it?
Thanks ahead of time for any info supplied

[Soquili]

Hello Venge,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

Sorry to hear about your brother.

It is possible to use Web Designer to recreate the site and maintain it. Any images already on the site can be used within Web Designer. You can create text areas to which you can paste text copied from the existing site or enter new text if need be.

Adding new pages and content is very easy.

You can download a 30 day trial version of Web Designer from http://www.xara.com/us/downloads/webdesigner/.

There is a very active Web Designer forum here at Talkgraphics where you can ask questions and receive many ways to accomplish what you need.

[ss-kalm]

Will it be as easy as buying Web Designer and importing our website code into it?

Welcome and Sorry about your brother from me too ...

Sorry again, but Web Designer is a graphic programme that exports graphics and generates html code when it is published. Web designer itself doesn't understand html, and cannot import html code.

[Venge]

Ok, so even tho my brother used Webstyle to create our web site, I can't reverse engineer it back into my copy of Web Designer then.
Thanks for the info
So I am best off just grabbing the new Web Designer program and making a new site with that?

[steve.ledger]

Rather like when you create an apple pie from gathering all the ingredients, putting it together then baking. The output is a hot apple pie, but you cannot put it back in the oven and reverse it back to flour, butter, eggs, sugar and apples

Web Designer takes what you have graphically/visually created then outputs the HTML code *only* during the export process.
With WD, you never need to work with HTML.

In short, yes - you would be much better off starting anew with Web Designer.
It's cheap, it's fun and best of all you are already a member of the greatest support and help forum for Web Designer on the planet.

[Venge]

Thanks for all the help everyone. It is very much appreciated.
Going to have a look at that trial version of Web Designer. I managed to get into my brother's account at the web hosting company he used so that will be my next aspect I have to figure out once I get a new site designed.
Anyway, ya, thanks again everyone.