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Book Description

Build and Customize your Small-Business Web Site

  • Build a highly usable, customer-friendly, and effective web site in next-to-no-time

  • No computerese! Plain English tutorials that everyone can follow and understand

  • Part of Packt’s Beginner’s Guide Series, offering step-by-step instructions for building a small-business web site from scratch

  • Emphasizes web design fundamentals and best practices along the way

  • Packed with Office Live Small Business Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

In Detail

Microsoft Office Live Small Business is an internet service that helps small businesses create web sites, and promote and market themselves. And you don’t need to buy or install any new software to use it. All you need is a web browser.

Office Live Small Business’s WYSIWYG, browser-based tools make developing a web site a breeze. But you can’t build good web sites with great tools alone; you also need a basic understanding of web design fundamentals. This book will walk you through Office Live Small Business’s fundamentals, and then show you how to use its design tools effectively. While you may not become a professional web designer just by reading this book, you’ll certainly be able to build a web site for your small business that will make your competitors envious and your friends jealous.

This book is all you need for getting started and developing your web presence with Microsoft Office Live Small Business. From setting up and running Small Business for the first time to creatively using its tools, this book delivers everything you need to know. Microsoft Office Live Small Business is controlled from the browser, so all you require is an internet connection, and this book, to get rolling.

Over the course of 10 chapters, and five appendices, this book will teach you to create effective content, organize it efficiently, and present it aesthetically. It also covers fine tuning, optimizing your site to be SEO friendly, and how to use the Reports that Office Live offers. This book is not about hard to build web animations or slick rollover effects. It’s about providing concise, easy-to-find, and easy-to-understand information about your business on the web. Don’t just build a web site - build a brand.

A practical Beginner’s Guide to planning, building, and implementing an Office Live Small Business Web Site

Table of Contents

  1. Microsoft Office Live Small Business Beginner's Guide
    1. Microsoft Office Live Small Business
    2. Credits
    3. About the Author
    4. Acknowledgments
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. Preface
      1. About Office Live Small Business
      2. Is Office Live Small Business right for you?
      3. About this book
      4. How to use this book
      5. What this book covers
      6. What you need for this book
      7. Who this book is for
      8. Conventions
      9. Time for action — uploading a document
        1. What just happened?
        2. Pop quiz
        3. Have a go hero
      10. Reader feedback
      11. Customer support
        1. Companion Website
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    7. 1. Getting Started
      1. Important preliminary points
      2. Signing in
      3. Time for action — sign in to your Office Live Small Business account
        1. What just happened?
      4. Signing out
      5. Time for action — sign out of your Office Live Small Business account
        1. What just happened?
      6. Exploring the website section
      7. Time for action — exploring the website section of your account
        1. Page Manager: the site-management tool
        2. The starter website
      8. Time for action — viewing the starter website
        1. What just happened?
        2. More about Page Manager
      9. Time for action — viewing page properties
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — explore page properties
        3. Site Designer and Page Editor: the design tools
      10. Time for action — exploring Site Designer
        1. Have a go hero — explore Site Designer's ribbon
      11. Time for action — exploring Page Editor
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — explore Page Editor's ribbon
        3. Pop quiz 1.1
        4. The rest of the tools: the galleries
        5. Have a go hero — explore the galleries
      12. Summary
    8. 2. Customizing Headers and Footers
      1. Choosing a title for your website
      2. Time for action — setting the site title
        1. What just happened?
      3. Choosing a slogan for your website
      4. Time for action — setting the site slogan
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with the site title and site slogan
        3. Pop quiz 2.1
      5. Setting the footer
      6. Time for action — customizing the footer
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with the footers
      7. Summary
    9. 3. Setting Design Options
      1. Choosing a theme for your website
      2. Time for action — choosing a theme
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with different themes
      3. Choosing a style for your website
      4. Time for action — choosing a style
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with different styles
      5. Choosing a navigation layout
      6. Time for action choosing a style
        1. What just happened?
      7. Choosing a color scheme for your website
      8. Time for action — choosing a color scheme
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with different color schemes
      9. Choosing a site font for your website
        1. Pop quiz 3.1
      10. Time for action — choosing the site font
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — choose another font if you wish
      11. Summary
    10. 4. Setting Page Display Options
      1. Setting site options
      2. Time for action — opening the Site options dialog
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with different page options
      3. Introducing Advanced design features
      4. Time for action — activating Advanced design features
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — preview your site's stylesheet
        3. Pop quiz 4.1
      5. Using Advanced design features
      6. Time for action — overriding the site width setting
        1. What just happened?
      7. Summary
    11. 5. Building Your Website's Skeleton
      1. Editing the home page
      2. Time for action — opening the Home page in Page Editor
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with Page Editor commands
        3. Choosing a page layout
      3. Time for action — changing the Layout
        1. What just happened?
        2. Customizing the page layout
      4. Time for action — customizing a layout
        1. What just happened?
        2. Creating a template for future use
      5. Time for action — creating and saving a page template
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — view template properties
        3. Creating content for the home page
        4. Have a go hero — write copy for your home page
        5. Building the Home page
      6. Time for action — add copy to the Home page
        1. What just happened?
      7. Re-creating the About Us page
      8. Time for action — creating a new page from a template
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — write copy for your about us page
      9. Re-creating the Contact Us page
      10. Time for action — re-creating the Contact Us page
        1. What just happened?
      11. Creating the Privacy Policy page
      12. Time for action — creating a new page from a template
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — write copy for your Privacy Policy page
        3. Building the Privacy Policy page
      13. Time for action — add copy to the Privacy Policy page
        1. What just happened?
      14. Deleting a page
      15. Time for action — deleting a web page
        1. What just happened?
      16. Summary
    12. 6. Building the Information Pages
      1. Selecting and organizing information for your site's information pages
        1. This book's companion site: a case study
          1. Step 1: Decide the purpose of the website
          2. Step 2: Specify potential visitors and classify them into groups
          3. Step 3: Wear the visitors' hats and think of questions they'd ask
          4. Step 4: Select questions that are worth answering
          5. Step 5: Classify questions into topics
          6. Step 6: Reword the section and topic names with phrases suitable for the website
          7. Step 7: Eliminate redundant information and finalize the page hierarchy
        2. A few more examples
          1. A website for children's art classes
          2. A website for an appliance repair service
        3. Have a go hero — selecting and organizing information for your website's information pages
      2. Creating section pages
      3. Time for action — creating a section page
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — creating the rest of the section pages
        3. Pop quiz 6.1
      4. Creating topic pages
      5. Time for action — creating a topic page
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — creating the rest of the topic pages
      6. Creating content for the section pages
        1. Have a go hero — writing content for section pages
      7. Creating content for the topic pages
        1. Have a go hero — writing content for topic pages
      8. Summary
    13. 7. Improving the Presentation
      1. Introducing Page Editor's modules
      2. Setting up a contact form with the Contact Us module
      3. Time for action — creating a contact form
        1. What just happened?
      4. Adding contact information
      5. Time for action — adding contact information
        1. What just happened?
      6. Displaying a map and driving directions
      7. Time for action — creating a map and driving directions page
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero: customize the Map & directions display
      8. Trying out a couple of other modules
      9. Time for action trying out Weather and Stock modules
        1. What just happened?
      10. Creating hyperlinks
      11. Time for action — creating a hyperlink to the Map page
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — working with hyperlinks
      12. Displaying pictures
      13. Time for action — displaying a picture
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — working with pictures
      14. Presenting data in tabular format
      15. Time for action — creating a table
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — working with tables
        3. Pop quiz 7.1
      16. Summary
    14. 8. Fine-tuning the Design
      1. Customizing the header
        1. A header with one of the built-in theme pictures
        2. A plain header without a logo or a picture
      2. Time for action — building a header without a logo or a picture
        1. What just happened?
        2. A header with a picture of your choice
      3. Time for action — building a header with a custom picture
        1. What just happened?
        2. A header with a logo and a picture
      4. Time for action — building a header with a logo and a picture
        1. What just happened?
        2. A header with a logo but no picture
      5. Time for action — building a header with a logo but no picture
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — experiment with the header
        3. Pop quiz 8.1
      6. Customizing the color scheme
      7. Time for action — customizing the color scheme
        1. What just happened?
      8. Using a custom stylesheet
        1. Tweaking the navigation links
      9. Time for action — manipulating the stylesheet to fix the navigation
        1. What just happened?
        2. Displaying borders around pictures
      10. Time for action — displaying a border around pictures
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero — play with styles
        3. Styling horizontal rules
      11. Time for action — styling the horizontal rules
        1. What just happened?
        2. Pop quiz 8.2
      12. Summary
    15. 9. Venturing Beyond the Basics
      1. About HTML modules
      2. Time for action — adding an HTML module to your page
        1. What just happened?
      3. HTML 101
        1. Working with paragraphs
        2. Working with horizontal rules
        3. Working with headings
        4. Working with hyperlinks
      4. Time for action — generating the markup for a hyperlink
        1. What just happened?
        2. Working with pictures
        3. Have a go hero — experiment with a picture's HTML markup
        4. Working with external content
        5. Have a go hero — experiment with a picture's HTML markup
        6. Pop quiz 9.1
      5. Further customization with solutions
      6. Summary
    16. 10. Optimizing for Search Engines
      1. What is SEO?
      2. What SEO is not
      3. Optimizing your web pages
        1. Do comply with web standards
        2. Do avoid HTML modules
        3. Do avoid Adobe Flash movies when HTML would do just fine
        4. Do follow best practices
          1. Specify a meaningful title for every page
      4. Time for action — specifying meaningful page titles
        1. What just happened?
          1. Specify keyword and description metatags wherever possible
      5. Time for action — specifying metatags
        1. What just happened?
          1. Fix broken links
          2. Write good copy
          3. Check your spelling
        2. Pop quiz 10.1
        3. Don't abuse metatags
        4. Don't add hidden text
        5. Don't link your pages to irrelevant pages
        6. Don't fall prey to dubious SEO advice
        7. Have a go hero — optimize your web pages
      6. Summary
    17. A. Signing Up: Opening a New Office Live Small Business Account
      1. Signing up
    18. B. Setting Up E-mail Accounts
      1. Creating an e-mail account
      2. Resetting the password of an e-mail account
      3. Deleting an e-mail account
    19. C. Submitting Your Site to Search Engines
    20. D. Backup and Restore: Recovering From Disasters
      1. Backing Up
      2. Restoring
    21. E. Reports: Analyzing Visitor Statistics
      1. Accessing Reports
      2. What exactly do these Reports tell you?
      3. What Reports don't tell you
      4. The right way to use Reports
      5. The wrong way to use Reports
      6. Are Reports accurate?
      7. What about Google Analytics?
    22. F. Answers to Pop Quizes
      1. Answers to Pop quiz 1.1
      2. Answer to Pop quiz 2.1
      3. Answer to Pop quiz 3.1
      4. Answer to Pop quiz 4.1
      5. Answer to Pop quiz 6.1
      6. Answers to Pop quiz 7.1
      7. Answer to Pop quiz 8.1
      8. Answers to Pop quiz 9.1
      9. Answers to Pop quiz 10.1
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