I’ve just designed a site for the Budleigh Salterton Art Club in Devon!
Me….a web designer?! Who’d have thought?!
I used Office Live to do it and it took about an hour to set up and launch!
You get to register a domain for free for the first year and you get free web hosting, free design tools and templates to create and edit your site and, to cap it all off, you get free support by phone and email – not that I needed it because it was so easy to set up the site!
You can pretty much add in anything you want at a click of a button:
Seeing as it’s an art club I added a photo gallery but you can have a multitude of modules including contact forms, event calendars, stock lists and even a quick fire map & direction section!
The navigation look and feel is very much like Microsoft Office, as you’d expect being called Office Live! But my point is it’s so easy for the web novice to find their way around and get a new half-way decent website up and receiving traffic in just a couple of hours.
Check out the 3 Step Guide on how to get started and see how other companies have got on with the system at their customer gallery!
It may not be as super-pretty as something a professional designer could whack out, but in these cash-strapped times there is a bunch of retired budding Van Gogh’s in deepest, darkest Devon who are very happy with the result!
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Hi Mel – Good to be able to keep track of you – nice site… I have Office Live but am worried it is some sort of MS trick to make me pay later?
That aside – keep up the work, have a few other mates in MS and Google so always interested in following their exploits
Nice to hear from you Guy! There’s no trick, it’s just a great service to help businesses get online quickly and easily!
Keeping reading for more news on my exploits! 🙂
Free hosting and as many free domains as I can get temporary CCard numbers for? Hope the office live spam team have had their weetabix! 🙂
@Daniel – Free for the 1st year my friend – Does DaveN know you moonlight? 😉 Oh….and I hear our spam team eats 4 Shredded Wheat!
Problem is….what happens after year one?
Jason – not a problem at all! You just renew your domain name: http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/free-domain-name
Hey Mel, just checked back here – you said no tricks… but you have only get 1 year free? I knew it… MS is after our money after all – ho ho!
That’s for the domain registration Guy – read the small print – that money doesn’t go to us!
You always were a cynic! 🙂
I was wrong! .co.uk is free for TWO years! The others are for a year….
Hey ho, keeping you on your toes… actually I was recommending someone look into this – it seems a good option for them. 🙂
Thanks for the positive review! Happy to see that Office Live worked out well for you. It’s comforting to know that someone so modest about their web design prowess can successfully construct a site on their own for free in this day and age where no one can fathom starting a business without launching a capable website. Another feature that Office Live offers is a free online Workspace, a location where you can store and backup up to 5 GB worth of files for later access. You can also allow others access to your workspace so that they can view and edit your documents, making group collaboration easy for colleagues who have trouble gathering in one place at one time. Set up your free Office Live Workspace here: http://www.officelive.com.
I hope this extra information helps,
– Jake
Office Live Outreach Team
Hey.. I’m actually impressed that this works quite well cross browser, or at least Firefox and Safari. Certainly an improvement from previous attempts Microsoft have made towards creating websites quickly.
I love this Microsoft office web set up, I have set up three sites. One for research I am undertaking, one for my small business and the last for a social club I am part of. Its really easy to use.
My only hope is that microsoft will expained the tools to include survey applications and maybe discussion forums. Excluding that, dead easy to use and a lot of fun.
@Paul – you can find details on surveys here: http://ask.officelive.com/smallbusiness/wiki/support/collect-customer-information-through-a-web-page.aspx and check this out too http://solutionsforofficelive.com/bravenetguestbook.aspx
If you use office live for their free one year website service…
(1) Is your domain name your to keep if you choose to transfer your domain name after the first year to another company or host?
(2) Are you charged hidden fees to transfer host or name after the free period is over?
(3) Free hosting usually means that sponsors have the right to post ads on your page and may even have the rights to your web content, is this true. What can you tell me about the ads or is it ads free?
(4) What is the privacy policy and where can I read on the contractual guidelines or limitations?
@Neki
1 – Correct, there are some instructions detailed here : http://ask.officelive.com/smallbusiness/qna/p/5205/15273.aspx#15273
2 – No
3 – It’s ads free
4 – http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.mspx
Also recommend reviewing http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-GB/FAQ and http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/Legal?cloc=en-gb&lc=en-gb
I have not taken the leap of working with Microsoft Office Live Web Design yet. My question: can attach Java applets behind this web page? I am a teacher & wanting to combine web design with Java code. Please make recommendations if you can… thanks.
Of course it all has to be free…..
i set up this website(www.buildersnorthnj.com)
through http://www.officlive.com for free,, i only paid for the domain name.
i heard that if hosting is free then i would not get traffic to my website!!!!!! is this true?
i need to know becuase i have to build a new one and i am confused if should pay for hosting through another company.
Thanx
Dona
Microsoft Office Live really great tool We built our company web site in couple of hours
My only hope is that Microsoft will explained the tools to include survey applications and maybe discussion forums. Excluding that, dead easy to use and a lot of fun.
I’ve been using MS Office Live Small Business since 2006 when the domains were
“free forever”. That changed to the “free for a year” promo mentioned above and eventually the free offer was removed completely. Now it’s US$14.95 a year for a domain. The real secret sauce of OLSB is the business applications function-which allows you to do things most free site hosting services don’t offer.
If anyone’s interested we’ve developed a blogging app for OLSB sites based on the Sharepoint bus apps. It’s the only blog for OLSB that resembles a real blog.