A while back we wrote rather cynically about Microsoft Office Live's Free Website Package.
..Somewhat unfairly in some ways it would seem, as following up on our promise to have a look at one, we finally found someone with the interest, and the time and skilled enough to make the best job possible through the Browser based interface.
Our friendly web guru from Ibiza Now who we have been chatting to about informally (as is almost everything in Ibiza) about getting their advanced content indexed, volunteered to have a go at it as the subject came up in conversation, mainly through disbelief that it could really be true I think.
..Somewhat unfairly in some ways it would seem, as following up on our promise to have a look at one, we finally found someone with the interest, and the time and skilled enough to make the best job possible through the Browser based interface.
Our friendly web guru from Ibiza Now who we have been chatting to about informally (as is almost everything in Ibiza) about getting their advanced content indexed, volunteered to have a go at it as the subject came up in conversation, mainly through disbelief that it could really be true I think.
The free domain name is not strictly how it came across it the advertising as you did have to enter credit card details to actually get your own unique domain name but when our collective natural aversion to paying for anything that was supposed to be free, or anything at all if we can actually help it :) ..we settled for the officelive.com subdomain option, which was actually free.
The interface was actually much better than I had expected from the efforts that Microsft showcased with that big fat juicy PR6 linklove, causing all 3 sites to go PR5, with virtually no other inbound links at all.
So I sat and watched as a highly skilled web developer messed around in the ultra simplistic, and dare I say foolproof interface, and got extremely frustrated until we could at least work out how to drop HTML into it to liven their view of the free website world up a bit.
Once we cracked that (and yes it is possible) things looked up a bit. To be fair we should probably get a complete novice to build one now too, as the whole thing took him less than 20 minutes.
We didnt interfere or advise on SEO at all, and are going to just let the site ride for a little while and see where it settles naturally. As an experiment in the viability of SEOing one of these we will come back again and look in a couple of months
You can see the site live here: Ibiza Now Book Shop built on Microsofts Free Website Platform
Frankly we think our demo example is comparable to any of the 3 enjoying the showcase status but are just not sure who to apply to with a showcase site in return for some MS linky love :)
Part 3 of this Post is here: SEO Update on Microsoft's Free Websites ..& It's doing OK :)
1 comments:
a caveat: it was 20 mins - that was because i had to work out what i could and couldnt do and was constantly looking for "where can i change the border?, why cant i (insert question) ?
there are plently of other template based hosting sites that are far more flexible...
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