

Ask HN: Turning over a website to a nontechnical “client” - yaur

A few years ago I built a simple Joomla based website as a favor for a friend and agreed to host it gratis on my &quot;project server&quot;. Since then he and I co-founded a start-up which failed and we are no longer on good terms. I am still stuck hosting his site, and removing the malware that gets installed every couple of months on his, now ancient, version Joomla.<p>I am currently in the process of changing hosting providers and have to do something with this site. Something in this case means either giving him his data and walking away or doing a migration to another platform and making him responsible for it. The challenges are:
1) He doesn&#x27;t have the technical skills to keep it up to date or clean up the mess after a hack.
2) I&#x27;m not interested in being involved in the ongoing maintenance of the site.<p>What I&#x27;m looking for is any advice&#x2F;best practices for doing this type of turn over.
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vinceguidry
Here's what I would do. Send him a email saying that the era of you hosting
his site for free is over as you're moving providers and can't afford to bring
him along. Then get to work moving your sites over, leaving his site. Talk to
your current host and get the account transferred over to him. Then hand him
the keys and be done with it.

If it's important enough to him he'll hire someone to help him the next time
the site gets hacked. If not that's when the site will die. Either way you're
clear.

