Once you have a system setup hosting requires minimal work, all it involves is settng up an account and taking the money. That is reasonable though for a small to modest website, the rate that hoehlenforscher mentions.
They are very cheap rates in a highly competetitive, cut-throat race, looks like a small one-man operation - good luck to him. Sounds like you are lucky there.
But most web hosts will charge serious money for coding services - or just say no! Support is usually strictly confined to how your website environment exists on their servers, the rest is up to you.
But web-maintenance is a different matter...
Without wishing to state the obvious: If you know how to do it, it's a trivially simple task - but if you don't then forget it.
Any intelligent technically minded person can learn how to do it, but they have to really want to!
CNC may be the first two of these but he clearly does not qualify for the third, to me he sounds like he would rather stick pins under his fingernails!
FTP editors are just confusing... no need to argue the toss about which third party application to use.
As an example CuteFTP is pushed by a number of hosting services as they are paid to do so - not because it is a particularly special or clever program. The idea is that a certain number of people out there pay for the fancy FTP software as they do not realise that there are TWO free FTP programs that ship with Windows.
wpwiz.exe is one (and what I usually use for automated uploads to the wesbites I run)
The other is good old command line FTP from the DOS prompt...
"Wow, that must be dangerous!" I hear you all gasp...
Actually it is a really basic and therefore simple tool, and it does not pretend to be anything other than unix based!
As long as you understand the fundamentals of what you are doing there is nothing to confuse you in these basic utilities.
But having grasped the basics of FTP you are no nearer to getting the job done...
You still have to make the changes to the HTML code.
If they are simple carefully designed and written pages using compliant code the you will at least have a head start trying to figure out which bit of the code really contains the text you want to change.
...but if they are a spaghetti mess because your predecessor did not really understand it either and relied upon a WYSIWYG editor (like Frontpage et al) then you have better get your prussicking kit on for this learning curve!
So in short my advice is this:
However long it takes, hang out for someone who really does know his/her stuff and can demonstrate it.
However well intentioned do not try it yourself unless you are 100% confident.
Getting it right can be rewarding - but breaking it without having any idea what it is you did wrong! SIDIGTTS
PS: I've just had a very quick troll through the CCC website. Excellent site, shame about the frames - a "Bad Thing(TM)" But for something built with Frontpage it ain't bad at all and a credit to whoever did it.
The reason frames are bad is that they allow the following oddities to happen:
http://www.cheddar-caving-club.org.uk/intro.htm
http://www.cheddar-caving-club.org.uk/banner.htm
http://www.cheddar-caving-club.org.uk/archive.htm
And you cannot specify a link to a particular page:
If it's a simple one-off edit, such as updating a meets list or someone's contact details, and not time consuming then I can possibly do it for you if you have no other options and are willing to wait until the begining of August. PeterB will vouch for me I hope.
