Help - Office Live Small Business shutting down

--Tony--

Office Live Small Business free web site hosting is closing on 1st May 2012.

http://ask.!!!!!!!!!!.com/smallbusiness/transition.aspx

You can more to 350 for $6 a month.

Are there any other options which are easy to move my site to?

Not sure I want to stay with Microsoft after this and I understand its not easy moving to their "paid" 360 service.

Might be time to ge elseware? any advice from those "in the know" I'm a bit out of my depth here and microsoft made it so easy to DIY a site before.

I understand you can still keep renewing the domain with Microsoft:

What happens to my custom domain name?

You will continue to own any custom domain name that you have purchased. Domain names can no longer be purchased through Office Live Small Business, but domains previously purchased through Office Live Small Business can continue to be renewed.

richard734

Join the ranks

You are better off getting an independent hosting agreement - I found one on Ebay for £2 for 2 years. You can either use their site builder or employ someone to build a site for you.
I used Vworker and found a great guy who rebuilt teh site and managed everything for $30!

--Tony--

Thanks for that I will look into it.

I have seen a lot of comments advising people to use wordpress so will look into that too.

richard734

Tony, my Vworker built me Wordpress site.
If you try and get it dont in teh UK, you are looking at £300-£500 unless you are happy to do it yourself.
I am not sure how domain name redirection works with a wordpress hosted site.

barryd999

I have a huge problem with this. A year ago I set up several websites for a charity and some of its members. My time was paid for my an EU Grant. The clients had neither the money or the skills to do it themselves and without the builder or the funding they just wouldnt have had a website.

Today the Charity was sent an email telling them it was getting shut down. It wouldnt be so bad if Microsoft had just started charging for it but no, the whole site has to be redone. This is beyond their capabilities and there is no money now available to pay to have it done. Its people like this that Microsoft have badly let down. Its a disgrace! Emails sent to microsoft have bounced back as their email account is full!

I myself have an office live website, its huge with hundreds of images. I however have not received an email from them so I wonder how many others are blissfully ignorant.

These sites evolve and to redo them is just an enormous task.

I knew it was coming but was assured by microsoft that we could move seamlessly to Office 365. This was completely untrue. Now many people will be goosed effectively. I wish we could sue them but I suppose its unlikely, no doubt they would have looked into all that.

Last year though I started using Google sites and whilst its a little tricky to get going I have found it better in the long term and its still free with no plans that I am aware of to change it. I think Google will do very well out of this and rightly so.

This doesnt solve the problem for my existing Office Live sites though unless funding can be put in place to transfer them.

I will never trust Microsoft again and will avoid their products where possible.

--Tony--

OK I still need help, I am really out of my depth here.

As I understand it (can anyone please correct me & fill in the blanks).

1, I need to build my new website - either myself or employ someone to do it for me.

Q at this stage where is my website, on my hard drive or online with a different name? If I use wordpress is it sitting there within my account?

2, I need to find a new host for my website and move my website to the new host.

Q If its on my hard drive do I upload it to the new host or if its currently online do I somehow move it from its current location (eg wordpress) to the new host or does the new host somehow redirect my domain to the wordpress pages or does the new host somehow link to wordpress and duplicate the pages (inc any future changes I make)?

Its all these nuts & bolts of the process I dont really understand, I created my old website and I can do the same again I just need to understand the process.

fwor

You really need to read the first steps and the five minute installation guides at wordpress:

http://codex.wordpress.org/First_Steps_With_WordPress

richard734

Hi Tony,

Your website lives on the Mirosoft Office servers. You can take a back up, but you cant open it, and it will only 'upload' to the MS office live site.

Trust me on this, I found out about this october/november last year I spend 2 months trying to figure out an easy way to do it... there aren't any!

Hosting is easy to find, and I am guessing that you are not a high volume user (Like Me) so should be cheep enough. When you get a hosting deal, a lot of them have Wordpress already integrated to the sites so you could be doubling the effort by prebuilding at home.

the final step is to cancel your MS live site, and do the dance to get your domain name pointing at the new host.

Trinitrotoluene

I do understand that this has put a lot of small businesses in a difficult position but in defence of Microsoft, you were paying what, £5 a year? Can you really complain at the service and hosting you got for paying five pound a year? What did you expect? For those who are heavy users on the platform I have even less sympathy. You get what you pay for. If you tie clients into cheap, arbitrary services then you deserve the hassle this is going to cause.

The real difficulty here is there is no way to easily migrate these sites which means most would have to be rebuilt from scratch. For the second time today I am going to advise against businesses doing this on the cheap. A lot of people fail to grasp how much of an impact a crap site has on their business.

To all those having issues what you are looking at doing this yourself I posted some instruction here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=50714599&postcount=5. As suggested before if you want to do this cheaply get a vworker to sort the process for you: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=vowrker&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vworker.com%2F&ei=pq8vT9GROqOl0AXJ57ytCA&usg=AFQjCNE3lECOfY7w6p0k4YTrzWrBPeXnMA

richard734

+1 vote for Vworkers...
i had been quoted £300 - £500 for UK companies/hosters/ experts to do this work for me.
Did a Vworker add, Max bid of £50 and had over 100 Vworkers bidding from as little as $7 to the max of $50
Went with a guy with only a couple of projects completed in his history, but with very good feedback in the end.
He rebuilt the whole site, lifted and shifted everything for me - all I had to do was sort the redirect out.
He has even continued to support Mr Stupid after the project has closed... I did send him a bonus as thanks though and will be using him for my next venture.

--Tony--

Thanks guys this is a great help.

Trinitroluene, I understand your point but I bought from Microsoft not $ites4U and never expected Microsoft to let me down.

It did not matter to me that the cost was only a few pound, I did my site this way because:

A. it was a Microsoft product who will not vanish overnight & foolishly I thought would not let me down.
B. it was dead easy to create, no harder than putting a Powepoint together.

The cost was not the factor and infact I would have been happy to pay more.

What Microsoft should be doing is saying they can no loger do free websites and charge for the service if we wish to continue, to shut the site down and create a new one (which I'm told is almost identical) and force people to create a new site is just stupid.

The only advantage to moving to Microsofts new 360 site is that they will handle the redirect.

I'm still a bit lost in the best way ahead, I will get a vworker to make my website, but do I do that straight away now or sort out the hosting first - I ask because of Richards comments above about me doubling my effort?

Also how will the vworker deliver the product to me?

will they send me a file which I later upload to the host or will I get a username and password for Wordpress with the content within which I somehow link with the hosting site.