Reloading site into iWeb

Hi all, I asked this on the Apple forums and just want to make sure that iWeb really does make these simple things difficult:

I've been helping someone with a harddrive crash. They had made their web site in iWeb and kept copies of all the files output when she ftp'd it to her web site. She did not know she needed the domain file (nor would I have thought you'd need anything other than the uploaded files).

She wants to continue working in iWeb, which means loading her web site back into it. We have all the needed files, yet iWeb apparently won't recognize anything.

The only option suggested so far is to basically redo the entire web site, which is time consuming since there are a lot of pages and custom layout. In essence, I was told we'd have to copy and paste each text section of each page, reload all the images, and resize each section.

Is this true? Is this really a software product that so totally limits the ability to work with basic html files? I'm a bit amazed they'd release a program designed this way.

Thanks for any suggestions. I'm really not looking forward to this if we have to rebuild from scratch.