There are many "easy" and "cheap" ways to get started with a personal web site. Here's one that's free, easy, and includes free domain registration, free hosting, and free Email. Surprisingly it is available from Microsoft. The product/service is called MS Office Live and it's in Beta testing, which means open to the public while being developed.

What MS Office Live is NOT!- This offering from Microsoft is NOT an on-line version of MS-Office Suite! The name choice for this new product is curious to say the least. It's not a bad name but it does cause confusion in the marketplace. Don't look here for on-line word processing, spreadsheets and the like.

What is Office Live? - Microsoft Office Live provides a free domain name, Web site hosting, and e-mail accounts. These services are offered at three different levels: Office Live Basics (free), Office Live Collaboration (monthly fee), and Office Live Essentials (monthly fee). The fee-based service adds business management applications, such as customer, project, and document management tools.

We are going to focus on the Office Live Basics package because that's where you get all those free things mentioned in the Hub title.

What is in the Office Live Basics package? - In a nutshell you get your own domain name, tools to make you own web site, and you get that site hosted for free. Based on my experience (see below), you can have a web site up in less than an hour and live to the world in less than a day.

• Free domain name - pick an available domain name and Microsoft has it registered for free (see the gotchas)
• Web site design tool - a fairly easy to use tool with a bunch of templates and options to make you feel like you have a little creative control.
• Free site hosting - for the Basics, as long as you stay with Microsoft's program.
• 5 free personalized e-mail accounts - Use your new personalized domain name as your Email address.
• Free Storage and data transfer - up to 30 MB of storage and 10 GB of bandwidth.
• Web site traffic analysis and reporting tools - see how often people visit your site, what pages they visit the most, and their system and browser information.
• Backup - data retained for up to 30 days.
• Support - the usual on-line support from Microsoft.

Who can benefit most? - Basics is a perfect name for this package service because the people who will benefit most are those with the most basic needs. It is perfect as a resume site for an individual, an electronic brochure for a small business or public mission statement for an organization. Think of it as a presentation site package.

If your needs stay small then the site endures, if your needs grow then think of this as a starter site (but look at the gotchas)

Who should pass on Office Live? - This service allows you to setup a simple site, easily and economically. If simple won't suffice, then Basics is not for you.

• Think text - Website construction is through a proprietary template system. HTML is not spoken here! You can't link to Technorati, adjust or hack your code, etc.
• Think small - They say you can have unlimited web pages, but 30 MB isn't a lot of storage.
• Think simple - A creative person can get more out of the web site templates than I can, but there are serious limits to how you can differentiate your site.
• Think presentation - this not going to be a commercial site, or an interactive site.

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