[monkeyman]

anyone use microsoft live to build there website?

[Blast Off Stoke]

Yes
basic editing tools , not a lot of choice in styles but is easy to use and only costs about £10 for a year.Im not brilliant on website design but did my own and does what i want it too.www.pressurewashable.co.uk

[Matt Gibson]

yeah, is it mircosoft office live small business you mean? (OLSB)

I used it, and a few others on here i know of, But i just rebuilt mine with wordpress.

OLSB is changing from a free service to paid, and its losing some of its features at the end of the year.

I'd go with another free service if i were you, so you dont have to worry about the hassle when it all changes.

I take it you wanna build it yourself?

[monkeyman]

hi matt.yes it is olsb i was looking at.
any good free ones that you can recommend?i was looking at designing it myself,nothing fancy,just basic info,numbers and a few before and after pics
thanks in advance

[Matt Gibson]

Gemma,

OLSB is great, and i have read up alot on what its going to be changing into, didnt really like what i heard so i went looking. Wordpress is great, but you need to host it somewhere, therefore you need to pay for hosting with any of the hosting websites. Im with a U.K based host and pay £29 a year, plus £4 for my domain name.

As for the free sites, i tried google, it doesnt seem too bad, i just could never get the hang of it. And then i tried Weebly, which was better than google i thought for a basic website.

Id say give them both a try, they are both free and you can try them out and see if you can come up with something before you let your page go ''live'' otherwise look into getting a hosting account and use wordpress. I sorted my own hosting account out, and i got someone to desgn my site with wordpress exactly like it was with OLSB.

Cheers,

Matt

[Blast Away]

When you get used to officelive you can pretty much do anything. Done mine myself on there http://www.blast-away.co.uk

Also got a few by Google. Here's one http://www.blastawaycleaning.co.uk

Again, you can pretty much do anything once you get in the swing of things.

Never paid for hosting, SEO etc. Just domain names from 1and1.

[Kenny83]

Hi matt, i'm in the process of converting my site over to word press www.powerwashcleaning.co.uk (still needs quite a bit of content/pics adding) I was wondering if you know how to create a drop down menu if i was to hover over my 'services' page? Help would be much appreciated, thanks. 

[Matt Gibson]

Hi mate,

I actually got someone to design it for me to look like my old one. I like the style of the one i designed so i wanted to keep it the same, and i dont use a dropdown menu on mine. But i had a bit of a look around, and when you log into your wordpress dashboard to edit things, there is a tab on the left called appearance.

Under that there is a tab called menu, and in that it seems like you can create a custom menu.I havent played around with it but the guy who designed my site is really good with wordpress. I can give you his details if you want?

[Kenny83]

Yes please mate if you would, thanks

[Matt Gibson]

Emailed you through your contact form on your website mate..

[Kenny83]

 

[marcus stacks]

Hi Mat,

Your site looks really good m8, that said...one thing you need to take up with your website designer is the coding errors under the hood....

you can view them here http://validator.w3.org/

This is really the most basic test of any website and ensures it works across all browsers and is correctly indexed by search engines. It should be an easy fix for someone with HTML understanding, so they should be able to resolve it for you. Just giving you the heads up!

Good luck

[Alan McTernan]

Hi Mat,

Your site looks really good m8, that said...one thing you need to take up with your website designer is the coding errors under the hood....

you can view them here http://validator.w3.org/

This is really the most basic test of any website and ensures it works across all browsers and is correctly indexed by search engines. It should be an easy fix for someone with HTML understanding, so they should be able to resolve it for you. Just giving you the heads up!

Good luck

Just checked mine and it came up with some faults so have just emiled my web designers

So thanks for the heads up Marcus, is there anything else to check for?

Regards
Alan

[Matt Gibson]

Alan,

Is your site getting you work?

If yes, then the errrs are not a problem.. 

[Alan McTernan]

Hi Matt,

Yes it is but with the amount of money it cost me i shouldn't have any faults

But seeing as i am not a techy guy i will see what they say

[marcus stacks]

Hi Alan,

I would say if you paid a professional web developer (not some guy who has read a couple of books) to build you a website they should at the very least provide you with a site built to the standards set out by the governing body of website standards, the W3C.

Its the only way to be 100% sure the site displays correctly across all browser types and browser versions as the browsers render sites on the specifications put forth by the W3C. It is the first thing they drum into your head when studying web application development at university (and over and over again for the next 3 years lol)

Another major issue with errors in html is how they can affect your search engine ranking, read this....

http://teeky.org/search-engine-optimization/how-important-is-the-valid-html-code-to-seo/

I would also consider running your site through a search engine optimsation test here

http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/

Search engine optimisation is by far the most important part of any website because if you arent on page one for critical search terms "window cleaning in YOUR AREA!" you are missing out on a great deal of business/interest to the competitor who is on page one............ Although that said its not always down to the web designers to include full SEO in builds and is more often than not a seperate service brought from a third party!

Good luck m8

[marcus stacks]

Forgot to mention, you will also need to make sure your website displays a "privacy policy", unfortunately its an EU law and *should* be provided as standard with any website.  

If you didnt have your website designed by a guy in a basement with a copy of "website design for dummies" by his side its worth taking up with them. Last thing you want is a European Data Protection Registrar on your back... or worse...