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Sometimes things don’t go as planned and it is necessary to replace a page. In this regard, the home page provides some special considerations. We will take a look at replacing an Office Live website home page and cover some useful skills in the process:
By default, the Office Live home page is the landing page for your domain name. For this reason, it can never be deleted. It can, however, be replaced with a new page. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step process to accomplish this. Activate Advanced Design Features Advanced Design Features provide a number of useful tools including a Custom Style Sheet and the ability to create your own page templates. The procedure is illustrated on the Office Live Skills site. The steps are first, log into your site account and click on “Web Site” in the top navigation. On the Page Manager page, click on the “Site Actions” drop down and select “Activate Advanced Design Features.” Everyone should just do this when they open a new Office Live Small Business site account. Custom Templates When Advanced Design Features are activated, something new will appear in the Page Manager. The link “Save as Template” is now located next to each page title. You can save any page on your site as a template. You can then use that template to create a new and identical page. When you create a New Page, the Custom Templates you saved will appear in the template selection pane. Another use for templates is creating a basic page structure for your web site. This is helpful if you have done a lot of customizing. You can even include special coding in the template for things such as a favicon, and site analytics. This eliminates the need to re-invent the wheel for every page and saves a lot of time. The template Template1 was used to build all of the pages in the Office Live Skills website. Build a Page Out of Public Sight By design, Office Live websites are, well, LIVE. This means if you are working on a new page, or editing an old one, the public may be getting glimpses of your page in various stages of building. A half-baked look can be the result. To avoid this, you have the option to remove the page from public view. When you create a new page, remove the check mark from the box “Show this page in the navigation bar.” If the page is already created, open it for editing and click on “Page Properties.” Again, remove the check mark from the “Show this page in the navigation bar” box. It becomes a little trickier to add or edit content for an established page which has been indexed by search engines. In this case, use an off-navigation “composition” or “test” page to create segments of content. Only when they are finished, copy and paste them to the target page. As a general rule, all new content, especially coded modules, should be tried on a test page first. If the page ends up damaged by improper content, a good page won’t be sacrificed. Replace Your Home Page We now have all the necessary pieces to replace a home page. Here are the steps:
In the Page Manager, click on “New Page” and choose an appropriate template
For “Page Title,” enter an appropriate title for your home page
For “Web Address,” enter “temp”
For Navigation, remove the check mark from “Show this page…”
Click on “Finish”
Now build your new home page here; do not copy any corrupted content from your old home page; Save and View frequently
When you are done, click on “Save as Template” in the Page Manager for this new page; enter template title
Now, once more, click on “New Page” in the Page Manager
This time, under “Custom Templates,” select the template you just saved in step 7
Enter the “Page Title” for your home page
For web address type default and nothing else; check the box for “Overwrite existing page” (this is important)
Click on “Finish” and you should now have a new, live, functioning home page for your site.
You can print these steps (click on “Download” or the document icon): Replace-Your-Home-Page.pdf
One of the most frequent questions posted in the Office Live Small Business Community is “How do I get my site into Google?” It seems to be easier to get into Carnegie Hall. We advise people to make good page titles, add some strong keywords, create valuable content, submit to the search engines, then wait a couple of months, blah, blah, blah. Well, I have just had the most amazing experience with the Office Live Skills web site. I was reviewing site reports this morning and noticed two visitors referred by Google. Google? How can that be? The site is only ten days old. It’s not finished. I have not submitted it to any SE’s yet. Nevertheless, Google. Two visitors. I entered site:office-live-skills.com into the Google search box and there they were: every page on the site is listed. Like the proverbial Hare, I have been racing to get the site finished so that I can submit it and wait my obligatory two or three months. But tortoise, it seems, the indifferent and slow-moving Google, has beaten me to the finish line. I may hold the record for getting an OLSB site indexed in just a few days. You can do it too. Here is how I believe this happened:
Unfortunately, using other blog hosts will not produce the same effect. If you embed them in an iframe, they are invisible to search engines. Try and find a way to use the Spaces blog tool effectively and you’ll win the race to search engine success.
When you signed up for an Office Live Small Business website account, you provided an email address. This became the User ID or “Windows Live ID” for the “Owner” of the site account. Anyone logged into the account with that email address, is identified as the “Owner” of the website. The “Owner” may access all account privileges. There can only be one Owner, but the Owner may assign some privileges to other email addresses. There are three levels of permissions for an OLSB account:
If you want someone else to edit or manage the site account, you can use this option. From the site account home page, click on Account Management » Users & Permissions. Enter an email address and choose a permission level. You can log into your site account with one of your domain email addresses. This provides access to the email inbox, but does not allow for editing the site. To provide for this added feature, assign Administrator or Editor privileges to that email address. I have not found a breakdown of what permissions are available to each level. If anyone knows of such a breakdown, I would appreciate hearing from you. I have determined that only the Owner may assign Users and Permissions and create new email addresses. Access to Site Reports is also limited to the Owner, or possibly also to an Administrator. If you receive an error message that the person signed in does not have permission for an action, it means the User ID does not carry the appropriate privilege. You can also find these instructions on the Office Live Skills website. Finally, at the present time, you may not change the Windows Live ID of the Owner for an Office Live Small Business account.
You have signed up for an Office Live Small Business website account and created your masterpiece. You are now ready to take the next step and purchase a Custom Domain Name. This is an essential step for a site that means business or where a professional presentation is essential. You click on Manage Domains at your site account home page, then select Buy a new domain. You have thought long and hard about the perfect appellation for you site. Leaving nothing to chance, you have researched the name and found that it is available. With a heart throbbing in breathless anticipation, you type the name into the text box. Then comes the unbearable response, “you have entered an unacceptable word or phrase.” Microsoft has been actively involved in solving some the the problems the internet has introduced. Some of these are internet scams, fraud, pornography and spamming. Consistent with these efforts, they are loathe to allow their services, including Office Live Small Business, to become vehicles for such activities. For example, Hotmail and Office Live Mail have daily sending limits designed to curb spamming. Similarly, Microsoft checks potential domain names for words that could be associated with problem sites. I have not found a definitive list of banned words. Postings in the Office Live Small Business Community would indicate that problem words are associated with banking, gambling, pornography and fraudulent activities in general. Parts of words and letter combinations that inadvertently appear in names with words run together will also trigger the response. So far, the words encountered include bank, lotto, lucky, online, nazi, cum and virgin. If your last name is Cumbie, Cummings or Slocum, and you come from Virginia, you may have a problem under this policy. I would appreciate having other disallowed domain names posted to the comments here. This would assist in developing a more complete list. Keep in mind, my delete button is at the ready. The word screening is done by machine. As we all know, machines are absolute, unyielding and dispassionate in their functions. The solution would be to devise a different domain name or variation that does not contain the offending word or phrase. If you believe the denial is inappropriate, try contacting Office Live Small Business support. I have no specific awareness of this, but they may be able to intercede in certain cases. Let me know here if you are successful with this approach.
I can help you avoid one of the most common mistakes made using the Office Live Small Business platform, so listen up. First, some definitions: Website: A website (or web site) is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name. Domain Name: A domain name is an identification label… The important thing to understand is that a domain name is not a website and a website is not a domain name. A website may have more than one domain name, but a domain name can only be associated with one website. Using Office Live Small Business, a website with a starter fourth-level domain name is free. If you purchase a custom domain name from Microsoft, there will be a yearly charge. The charge is for the domain name, not the website. Finally, you may have multiple Office Live Small Business websites, but each must have a separate site account and a different Windows Live ID. The Mistake If you have an OLSB website account and you purchase a domain name, it will point to the existing website. You can not create a different website with this domain name. Furthermore, this is a difficult mistake from which to recover. I’ll discuss that in a minute. Microsoft could make some simple improvements that would prevent the majority of these mistakes. For example, in our site accounts, change “Buy a new domain” to “Buy a new domain name.” Then add a little clarification to the process. Change “Type the domain name that you want to register” to “Type the domain name that you want to register for this website.” Perhaps in time, they will grow weary of the support problems and make these simple changes. Create a New Website Recall how you started your first website. You found a sign-up page with a “Get Started Free” button. You must do the same for all additional sites and each site account must have a different Windows Live ID. One portal is the Create a free website link in the “Powered By” logo at the bottom of your website pages. Be sure the correct country is set before proceeding. At the top-right corner of the page: United States (Change), for example. Experienced users will sign up for a free Hotmail address to use as the primary (“Owner’s”) Windows Live ID for an OLSB account. This carries a number of advantages:
Purchase a Custom Domain Name Log into your OLSB website account. Click on Manage Domains » Buy a new domain. Again, this does not create a new website. Release a Custom Domain Name Don’t cancel the domain name. If you wish to get a domain name released from one website for use with another, you will need to get instructions and assistance from Office Live Email Support. Even if you cancel the domain name, it remains unavailable for another website. At the present time, only Support can solve this problem.