Microsoft Office Live

Anyone taking them up on the free domain name and web hosting oiffer?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Is anyone using Microsoft Office Live's free hosting and domain name offer?

[engine]

Not me.

I'd guess it's aimed more at home users, rather than the membership here at WebmasterWorld.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

It's listed under Small Business Products.

[bill]

It's a confusing name, that's for sure. I was initially expecting the Microsoft Office suite of programs to be made available online. It turns out to be more like Yahoo's small business web hosting package.

I haven't actually met anyone who's used this service.

[boomtown123]

I signed up for the free service over a year ago. I wouldn't recommend it for a business (small or large) because you can't do any hardcore HTML editing or coding. Everything is done through their WYSIWYG backend. There's no shopping cart on the free version either.

If you wanted a static and simple website though, I'd highly recommend it. For a purely informational website, this would work.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Can it be SEO'd?

[boomtown123]

I'm definitely no SEO expert, but I'd have to say there is very little chance for any blackhat stuff and even whitehat techniques are limited. (Maybe someone a lot smarter than me would know better though....)

The catch with the free version of the service is that there is no real HTML editing. You have to use their dumbed down back end. For a home user, this is great. For someone who wants to tweak the code, you won't be happy.

If your idea of SEO is putting up great content and nothing else, this service is perfect.

The other downside is that you can't use these websites to do any real community building. No forums of any kind. Bummer.

If you've got a grandmother who wants a website or you want to set up a website for your kid, then I highly recommend this service.