New website re Office Live Closing problems

sharonace

We have had our website with Office Live for quite a while, been very happy with it. As this is no longer going to be available from the end of April I have been trying to create a new website for the last couple of months to no avail.
We have our domain name and our business telephone/broadband provider will host our new website. They have asked that when I have completed it let them know and they will email me the FTP folder address, drag and drop the file into that and they will get the 'A' records pointed and it should be up and running.
I was told that I could create one using Publisher 2003 then copy this into Publisher 2010 which I have done and run then web design check, which came back ok.
This has not proved to be as straightforward as I thought. Any suggestions of any other way of doing this. Its quite a small website only 4 pages with 8 pictures, name & address banner, map and contact us.
Was wondering about the free Serif Webplus or Wordpress but not certain if then you have to be hosted by them.
The query I have been confusing myself with is should I contact Office Live to inform them that I am moving host or will it be better to wait until after April 30th when they are no longer hosting.
I am not very techy but quite good at cutting & pasting, drag & drop so this is the type of programme/software I would prefer to use.
The caffeine is not helping me to sort this out at all !! Any basic ideas help much appreciated.

peteb23

sharonace wrote: »

The query I have been confusing myself with is should I contact Office Live to inform them that I am moving host or will it be better to wait until after April 30th when they are no longer hosting.

Get your site uploaded to the new server.

[Quick tip: make a slight change to the text on the homepage if you are duplicating your existing site - so that you will be able to identify the one on the old server from the one on the new server.]

Get your provider to change the DNS settings to point away from Office to their server. It can take up to 72hours for the new details to propagate around the web - once this has happened you can safely close your other account.

You may also need to check your email set up if they are currently handled by microsoft office.

Hope that helps.

steve1980

You may find that Microsoft close all links on their websites. There is no FTP function with them so you can't download the content and images. You would essentially have to start over.

You would be better using Wordpress which can be hosted by anyone who will give you a MySQL database.