Posts tagged Free Web Sites
Free Website: Office Live Small Business
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Update 2-1-2012: Office Live Small Business will be discontinued soon. If you have a free website, you will be offered a free 6-month trial of the new Office 365 service. There are several subscription levels, but the website will no longer be free. Visit the Microsoft site for details.
A gift to writers from Microsoft! We need an online presence, but we don’t want to spend a fortune for it. For the first website, most writers want something low-cost, or better yet—FREE. Recently, I discovered Microsoft’s free websites for small business. I’ve “test-drove” it, and I’m now recommending MS Office Live Small Business (hereafter referred to as OLSB).
My trial site: See my experimental site at http://emilyakin.web.officelive.com/default.aspx. Check out the description of the service here.
The Advantages:
- Easy to set up. All you need is a Microsoft Windows Live account. If you have a Hotmail account, you can probably use that. I set up emilyakin@live.com for mine. Once you have your e-mail address, go to http://www.officelive.com/ and click on Get Started.
- There’s plenty of help online. Whenever I was stuck, I just went to Google and searched my question. For example, I searched “how to add a picture in Office Live Small Business.” Here’s the result. I encountered no problem that I could not solve by searching on Google.
- It’s free. As with any free product, there are add-ons that seem very affordable. Details on that here.
The Disadvantages:
- The lengthy URL (see my sample above) will not be easy for customers to remember. It will clutter up your business card, too. You can purchase a domain name for $14.95 a year as an add-on or purchase it elsewhere.
- Although there are numerous generic design options, none of them are specifically for writers. You can add photos to the design header to customize your look, however.
- No blog feature. Some of the other free options for websites also include a blog page. But, you can always blog on Blogger or WordPress and link to your blog from your site.
- No phone or chat support. This is only a disadvantage if you lack confidence in your ability to use the help info you find online.
This is neither an advantage or disadvantage—just something you should know. You need to log in once in a while to keep your service active. If you don’t, you will get an e-mail saying that, since your site is dormant, it will be deleted. You need to update frequently anyway, so I don’t see where that’s a problem.
Examples:
Southeast Christian Writers (purchased domain through OLSB)
Kentucky ChristianWriters Conference (domain name with another service, pointed to OLSB)
Try it out. Set yourself up and experiment. Don’t worry about what others think of it. As long as you don’t publicize your URL, it’s unlikely that anyone would find it. If you decide to go with it, you can start sharing your URL when you’re sure it’s ready for public consumption. Here’s a great tutorial if you need it.
PS: In the past, I have recommended other free site services. I have set up sample sites on Viviti, Freewebs (Webs.com), and Blinkweb. Visit the URLs below. Blinkweb is the only one that is free of ads as well as free of charge. Except for the blog feature, I think MS Office Live Small Business is the better choice for a writer.
http://www.freewebs.com/emilyakin/
http://emilyakin.blinkweb.com/
Also, see my previous posts about free websites here.
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Note: I’m switching to “website” for this blog as opposed to “Web site,” because Associated Press has recently changed their rule to make “website” the correct spelling. See AP Stylebook site here.
Free Web Sites: One Last Word
0I had intended to move on to other topics for this post, but I put a request for information about WordPress on one of my online groups. I got a response that I want to share with you. Although the article was posted last year, the information is still good.
Monday, 29 September 2008
DIY Web Sites: Should You or Shouldn’t You?
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Get a Web site! That’s one piece of advice freelance writers and editors get from marketing classes and consultants at every turn. Since I started this blog a couple of years ago, I have included a number of posts about how to produce a Web site yourself using low-cost or free site builders. Whether you’re in business or just have a serious hobby, you need to keep your costs low, don’t you? (more…)
Creating a Free Site with WordPress
0I searched the Web for step-by-step instructions on how to set up a free site with WordPress.com, but I found nothing. I first became aware that this was possible when I ran across Brandy Brow’s site at www.brandybrow.com.
Notice the address bar when you arrive on her site (http://brandybrow.wordpress.com/).
She has purchased her own domain name and re-directed it to the free WordPress site, thereby saving hosting fees. Most people coming to her site using brandybrow.com would not even notice the different URL.
I needed to do a free site for my music club, so I created this one using Brandy’s approach: www.philharmonicmusicguild.info. Check the URL in the address bar when you arrive there: http://pmgmartin.wordpress.com/. Note that you can’t always get the URL you want when you’re dealing with free services.
I’ve created a new page for the directions on how to do this. Go to Free Site with WordPress following this link. Good luck!
Get a Simple Web Site
0Every writer needs to have an online presence as part of their marketing effort. Whether you write books or articles for magazines, you need to have, at the very least, a brochure-style Web site and/or a blog. If you want to go into business as a writing coach or a freelance editor, you must have a professional-looking site, preferably with a blog.
On my Wired to Write blog, I’ve checked out several free Web site options, and I’ll refer you to that post rather than repeating the information here. Go to Wired to Write before going further.
As an update to the post you just read, I want to point out some changes with Viviti. You get a two-week free trial with no ads. After that, you must choose to pay about $5.00 a month or put up with an ad across the top of the page. It’s pretty much the same with Freewebs (now called Webs). The only free site builder with no ads is Blinkweb, and it might work for you, but it does not have as many design options, and you might not be able to customize it to suit your needs.
Note the ad on my free Viviti site at http://emilyakin.viviti.com/ and on my Freewebs site. In case you missed my free Blinkweb site on my other blog, here it is again, http://emilyakin.blinkweb.com/. Some would say that the ads detract from your image as a professional.
There’s one more way to have a free site without ads, and that’s with WordPress, the blogging tool. I just completed a site for my music club on WordPress. Take a look. It is in blog format, but you can make it operate like a Web site and still use the blog feature. See my how-to post on this option also on Wired to Write here.
If you are a writer and don’t have a Web site, don’t delay. Choose one of these free options and try it out. Check out these sites built by writers with free site builders. If you decide that you can’t do it yourself, perhaps you can get someone to help you set it up and work with you until you can edit it yourself as needed. And, if the free options don’t really suit you, the paid versions are not really that expensive.
Warning: if you do choose a paid version of any of the free sitebuilders, do not buy a domain name through them. Should you decide you need your own domain name, you want to own it. In some cases, when you get a free domain with paid hosting, the company owns your domain name, not you.
Free Web Site Offerings – Part One
0In my last post, I promised to review the free Web site offerings that I have tried out. Since I tried several services, I will break it up into two posts. This time I’ll evaluate http://www.freewebs.com/ and http://www.tripod.com/ free web-site builders. Next time, I’ll give feedback on the web-builder offered at http://www.ezchristianhosting.com/ and http://business.blinkweb.com/.
My criteria for judging the free services are pretty simple.
- How easy is it to use?
- How intrusive are the inevitable ads that will appear on the site?
- Is there an opportunity to upgrade to a paid version with more features and no ads?
Freewebs: I set up a site for my music club using this one.
http://www.freewebs.philharmonicmusicguild.com/
I like the quality and variety of designs that are available. However, I wanted to put a table on the schedule page, and I couldn’t immediately figure out how to do it. That’s why the schedule is basically paragraph text. The ads are not intrusive at all, so I give Freewebs high marks on this. They do offer upgrade options that remove the ads as low as $4.16 a month or $49.95 a year.
Tripod: Ads, ads, ads. Take a look at my free site at http://emilyakin.tripod.com/. Then, go to http://www.tripod.com/, get a username and password (which also works for Lycos webmail), and try it out. The upgrades begin at $4.95 a month with a $10 setup fee. All upgrades will remove the ads from the page, which is, I think, extremely distracting. Once you have you’ve set up your account, you can experiment with the web-builder and browse the various offerings.
Disclaimer: If you sign up for the free version of these services, you will be able to play around with the web-builder and the designs at no cost. When you begin to look at upgrading, though, please read all the fine print. Sometimes, to get the lowest cost, you have to pay for a full year in one payment. Neither of the services above asks for credit card information. Also, if you are on dial-up Internet service, you’ll find it hard to use the web-builders because it will take a long time for the page to load each time you update and save your work.
More in the next post. Meanwhile, I invite you to comment or subscribe.
