Microsoft desperately wants your website business

screenshot of Microsoft live basics logoYou often get what you pay for- and Microsoft is now so desperate to gain users and traffic for it’s Microsoft live search- that they are willing to host your site for free as long as you get hooked on their advertising keywords business.

Design tools, Web hosting, and business e-mail for small business | Microsoft Office Live – Microsoft Office Online
Microsoft Office Live Basics is the easy way to get started on the Web. If you have always wanted your own Web site, Microsoft Office Live Small Business has just made it easier — much easier.

  • Free domain name and Web hosting
  • Easy-to-use Web site design tools
  • 500 MB of Web site storage space
  • 25 company-branded e-mail accounts
  • Web site reports
  • Search advertising tool with $50 credit

Get Microsoft Office Live Basics for FREE
and get a $50 search advertising credit

As Johnny come lately to the world of search and even the Internet, Microsoft is so desperate to compete with Google that they will try almost anything- and spend good money doing it. A cursory look at the sample sites show that as always, Microsoft still doesn’t get the idea of easy-to-use- since the small business sites I looked at were still missing normal data: like a page title other than “Home”

AC Lawrence Real Estate

Seaport Photography

Neither site had RSS, or the search engine friendly features that come in the true Open Source solution we recommend that are built into Word Press. When you elect to go with a closed loop system like Microsoft office live’s free hosting- you will be forever locked into whatever feature set Microsoft chooses to support.

There are inexpensive hosting packages out there, and there is also www.wordpress.com where anyone can build a highly effective WordPress site for free- but in the end, you still get what you pay for.

We don’t demand you host with us after taking our seminar- although we do believe our $159 annual hosting fee with URL registration is reasonable, considering we provide support- and give you true Open Source solutions to support maximum flexibility and adherence to W3C standards.

If you want to see sample sites from our websitetologists, take a look here: Websitetologists.

Compare the amount of content on their sites to those of the sample Microsoft Live sites- and remember- content drives traffic for smart people. Paid ads drive traffic for, well, stupid people.

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WordPress Makes Sense For Many Non-Blog Websites

We’re not the only ones who believe WordPress is a great CMS for “non-blog” uses.

WordPress Makes Sense For Many Non-Blog Websites | iface thoughts
…justification for why WordPress makes a lot of sense for many simple web sites, including the non-blog ones. The shorter version is that WordPress provides good infrastructure of web publishing and gives you tools to build an interactive web site. And I think this is common knowledge in the WordPress community.

Click over to the link to see a whole bunch of his reasons why WordPress rocks- never mind it’s ability to get you to the top of Google fast and easy for free.

We’ve got a while list of our “graduates” who are using WordPress to maximize their business opportunities online here: http://websitetology.com/?page_id=9

Considering how important it is to be able to update a site and keep content fresh- the simple to use WordPress interface makes it possible for everyone in the company to work on keeping the company web site up to date.

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When uber geeks speak: D’Arcy Norman returns to WordPress

I learn a lot from D’Arcy- even though I’ve never met him.

About a year ago, he switched his blog to Drupal from WordPress- and I felt kind of left out- no longer was I recognized on the comments- and I stopped getting an e-mail when more comments were made. The content lost some of the community. There was one post about one of D’Arcy’s friends, Sammi- getting hassled by cops because of “profiling” for terrorists- I felt I was a big part of a conversation about if the post should stay up- or not.

So- today, D’Arcy recognized that WordPress does some things way better than Drupal – and made the switch back:

Switched back to WordPress at D’Arcy Norman dot net
I’ve been using Drupal for my blog for just over a year now, and it’s been a really great platform to work in. I use it pretty much all day for projects at the U of C as well. But it just feels a bit lacking in the area of managing a personal blog, compared with WordPress which is built solely for that purpose.

I’ve been missing things like email subscriptions to comments, and some of the other niceties that WordPress has had nailed for a long time, but are missing in Drupal.

If uber geek, D’Arcy can’t make Drupal sing- at least for the community parts- I’m pretty sure others can’t.

I feel like I’ve just been let back into D’Arcy world- and am very happy.

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