Absolute recursive tar without parent directories?
GNU tar has a -C option for this.
-C, --directory=DIR
change to directory DIR
So you could do something like:
tar -C /var/www/website -zcvf /tmp/mytar.tar.gz .
Untarring (you will do that eventually) is the same:
tar -C /var/www/website -zxvf /tmp/mytar.tar.gz