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Microsoft Office Live Small Business

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Isn't it great when you spend all day sat in front of a PC and then get home and get asked to do the same thing? Over the last week I've been helping my wife set up a website designed to keep the residents of our village informed about the Community Plan that is being developed.

When she first asked me to help out, the developer in me wanted to open Visual Studio and hit File | New | Website... but I needed to produce something that a non-developer could update and maintain. In other words, I'd quite like my evenings back!

So, I thought I'd play with the Microsoft Office Live Small Business service. I have to say, I'm very impressed! The website designer gives you quite a lot of freedom, and allows you to fall back into writing HTML if you find it can't quite do what you want. However, I've not found many places where that was necessary.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business also provides a whole host of services around e-mail campaigns, site reports, contact management etc. On top of that, when you sign up you get free domain name registration.

I found Chris's unofficial Office Live developer blog useful in highlighting some of the more advanced features that the service supports, in particular his post about the new advanced design features. And, if you really need to, it's possible to take full control of the site design by using tools like Expressions.

Anyway, the finished site for Twyford Village Partnership can be found at https://www.twyfordvillage.com.

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