MSFT - OfficeLive changing

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Rick Bergeron - CPF

Rick Bergeron - CPF

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Aug 18, 1999
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Canistota, SD USA
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Lost Cajun Chateaux
Before the year ends, MSFT OfficeLive as several of us know it today, will cease to exist. What MSFT considers to be the replacement, O-365, will probably not fit the needs of most framers who have a current implementation of OfficeLive.

There's no need to rush to move elsewhere. There's at least 9 months to go.

Current OfficeLive users will be offered 90 days of O-365 @ no charge, then the current rate schedule of $6/user/month will apply. 1 email account = 1 user. Existing websites will be required to be rebuilt from scratch. Currently, not all the present modules are slated to be available within O-365. If you have a business application in use, you will have to re-build that application using SharePoint. (that's Greek to me)

A MSFT engineer has commented "The plumber, who has no need for the collaboration tools of O-365, is NOT the MSFT target audience". Substitute 'picture framer' for 'the plumber'.

Other than that, MSFT has been very quiet about answering questions regarding OfficeLive customers other than point to existing O-365 or Sharepoint marketing materials.

I don't currently have an alternative but I have moved all of my domains from the MSFT registrar (MelbourneIT) to GoDaddy; then redirect them back to OfficeLive just because I felt better knowing that I had control over the domain registration and could move to another host at my discretion. I know of a few power users who speak well of "Yola" and "Weebly" as user friendly template based alternatives.

If anyone wants to tinker or look around O-365, I can create an Admin account under my O-365 beta account and you'll have full access to see the general gist of things. Just send me a note.

Several power users were invited to MSFT last April to talk about OfficeLive. We thought that we would see what was on the front burner for new additions. We were shown NOTHING except BPOS and asked if we could pick and choose BPOS features to enhance OfficeLive, which ones would we choose. There were none. We asked for better public website tools. We also signed non-disclosure agreements before any meeting but we weren't shown anything that didn't already exist. If I had known then, what I know now, I wouldn't have wasted 3 days in Bellevue.

If or when I have concrete details, I'll let you know.
 
Thanks for the rundown, Rick. Microsoft Office Live met my needs for the shop and our PPFA chapter. It was easy to pick up and changes could be made in minutes. Please keep us posted. I was tempted to switch to Fiios and they were offering a free Intuit website for a year. I don't know much except that I'm sure that they will charge after the year is up.

Thanks for taking the time for us!
Susan
 
Thanks Rick,

That means I have at least 4 websites to rebuild.

I guess when MicroSoft Live offered FREE websites for life, they didn't really mean it. First they started charging for the FREE domain name for life, and now for the website hosting. Will start looking around.
 
If you must re-due your website you might look at 1and1.com ---they have some very good prices and a very easy to design your website--one price and all the pages you want.
 
Like I said, OL won't be turned off until at least Oct 31, 2011 so don't get in too big a hurry to start moving things around.

If you decide to move your hosting to one of the huge discounters, don't forget that in addition to website hosting that you have email hosting with OfficeLive. Make sure that email service is included with the package and so that you can recreated the same email address that you are currently using.

There are quite a few people that have moved their OL hosting without asking about email. Then they found out that they no longer had the OL email addresses. Once an OL/hotmail email address is cancelled, it cannot be recreated for 271 days. MSFT cannot even manually bypass that timelimit.

Your registrar and host can be the same company OR they can be different.

Mike probably has one of the better lists of registrar/host combos.
 
j Paul said:
Thanks Rick,

That means I have at least 4 websites to rebuild.

I guess when MicroSoft Live offered FREE websites for life, they didn't really mean it. First they started charging for the FREE domain name for life, and now for the website hosting. Will start looking around.
Click to expand...

Here is a start on my new shop site http://www.customframingtoledo.com/
(note audio will not remain activated)

Here is a screen shot of the home page that I am working on for the revised LIFE site.

That fall date when Microsoft Office Live goes away is fast approaching folks, I hope you are working on your sites.
 
Lookin' good John.

Rumor has it that the late fall date has been pushed into early 2012 because of the O-365 team basically ignoring the public website portion of the program for which they are now finding a HUGE resistance to adoption. MSFT is having difficulty convincing customers that they must now pay for a service which is downgraded in features from the similar service that was free and that MSFT has said that there is no way to import the data at the present moment other than recreate the site block by block.

If any Grumblers have one of the first domains.......... ie: your OWNER ID email account is @ your domain be very careful before you make any changes or before you think about moving your registration so that you can control your domain. MSFT has acknowledged that the procedure DOES NOT WORK if you have an account which was created during that timeframe and you will have issues where MSFT cannot offer any assistance. DAMHIKT
 
Rick,
I think that I am one of the chosen. I haven't tried to move it yet, but was thinking about Wordpress. What issues would I have in moving it? Thanks for keeping us Grumblers posted on this. I thought by now, they would have informed us what's going on. I don't want to be building a new website during the holiday rush.
Susan
 
Sorry it took me a while to find the links to pages @ MelbourneIT that will be useful during the process. I have not seen any official announcement of an OLSB dropdead date for the service to be discontinued. There is a rumour that the date has been pushed into 2012 because O-365 was advertised as a direct replacement for OLSB and the MSFT O-365 team is finally seeing that they made quite a few wrong assumptions and did literally nothing to accomodate OLSB users.

The process is not difficult if you can find the proper links within the MIT website. The process can have significant waiting periods since documents will be passed between you and MIT for approval since the MIT records will have your OLSB email account to prove ownership and as soon as you "Cancel" the OLSB account, the email address becomes invalid which makes proving ownership difficult.

DON’T do this until you are ready for your website AND email access to disappear from the internet for a while and/or until you have a replacement ready. The procedure will cause your account with MSFT OfficeLiveSmallBusiness (OLSB) to be cancelled immediately. All files AND all emails will be permanently deleted from the MSFT.

Your OLSB website data will not transfer in any usable form to any other host. I have heard that Weebly.com and Yola.com have been attractive to some OLSB users. Also, there are traditional hosting accounts available that have template driven software included with the hosting account. The choice is yours depending upon your skill level or available time.

Typical Disclaimer: I have done my best to verify the process and test the links but proceed at your own risk. If something gets lost and you don't have a backup, shame on you. If your domain gets lost and the links below don't help, it will be between you, MelbourneIT and MSFT to sort things out.

  • 1. If you don’t already have an alternate email address that is functional and NOT associated with your domain, get one. It can be a GMAIL.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com or any other of your choosing.
  • 2. Go to MelbourneIT.com and create an account using current OLSB OWNER email account as the primary email address. Use your gmail, Hotmail, etc email account as the “Alternate” email address. MelbourneIT is the domain registrar for whom MSFT is a reseller.
  • 3. Save and backup all your emails. If you are using an email application, change the passwords stored for your domain email accounts to a password that will FAIL. If you are using a web application to read email, follow the directions within the webapp to save your email messages. The reason is that when you cancel your OLSB account, those email accounts will be deleted along with the email itself. If you have a valid password stored, the next time your email application attempts to sync, all email will also be deleted from your local app. DAMHIKT. Log into your OfficeLive account using the OwnerID. Go to the “Account Management” section and select “Cancel Account”. Choose the option “Keep the account and remove only the custom domain”. There will be a 2nd screen for you to “Confirm” your choice to cancel your account. Once you say OK, everything is instantaneous.
  • 4. The is the most difficult step mainly because MelbourneIT does a good job of hiding the links or making them difficult for the average person to find. MSFT will send a DRK (Domain Registration Key) to the OwnerID which was just canceled. Therefore, you will never receive the DRK. It doesn’t matter since the DRK that was sent would not work because the OLSB OwnerID was @ the domain that was canceled. The DRK that MSFT sends is only valid with MelbourneIT and is NOT the same as an authinfo, epp code or other code that is accepted by all domain registrars for the purpose of transferring domains from one registrar to another. Here is the link to MIT internal xfer http://www.melbourneit.com.au/cc/godirect/ If you happen to receive a DRK, you can test it. If it works, you just saved a week’s worth of headache. Otherwise, you will also need this link http://www.melbourneit.com.au/document.php?handle=regkeyrecovery because you will complete this form and return it to MIT. Emailing it to the address on the form is the best but you will need a way to embed your signature or sign, scan & email the form back. This is the hard part…. Waiting for MIT to respond. If you are lucky, MIT will send a DRK to you that will work or they will send a notice that you have control of your domain within your account. Congratulations, you have completed the difficult part of the process. Everything from this point on is straight forward instructions that are pretty much identical between all registrars.
  • 5. Once you have control of your domain @ MIT, you can leave the domain registration with MIT ($35 or more per year) or you can create an account with any other registrar of your choosing and transfer it to them. I use GoDaddy for my registration but GoDaddy would be my last choice on the planet for hosting. There are several hosts that receive very good reviews, have US based support and have annual costs that are in the same range as MSFT OLSB.
 
Hi Maureen,

Your domain registration expires 9/15/2011. That means that around September 5, 2011, MSFT will replace your site with a basic page that says your registration has been sent to collections for non-payment. That also means that all your email stored on their servers have been permanently deleted with zero chance of recovery.

I'm assuming that less than 2 weeks is not enough time for you to make other arrangements. If I were you, I'd pay the $15 MSFT renewal fee if that is still an option.

I moved my domain registrations from OLSB a little over a year ago and then redirected the hosting back to the service. I really don't know what would happen if that was tried nowdays. When I did it, that was how MSFT realized that there was a glitch in moving the domain registration since I had domain names that were created back in the beta and V1 timeframe. I was on a conference call with the OLSB engineering manager, 3 engineers and the OLSB public liason. They were monitoring the process from there end and allegedly would be able to avoid disaster if something unexpected happened when I clicked the "Cancel" button. Lo and Behold, something unexpected happened and there was nothing they could do. After 2 weeks, they finally said "Sorry, we screwed up and all the engineers within MSFT cannot undo what happened."

We currently only have a single static page but I would have used the template software provided by our host. We also have 2 e-commerce sites.
 
Well so far I've been digging around trying to understand all this stuff. There seems to be no number to reach anyone at Microsoft, but they've told me through email I should be able to get the Domain Registration Key to give to Melbourne to get control of my domain. Still waiting on when I have to switch to 365, although information published in their support area is saying they've pushed it back til Oct. or maybe even Feb. 2012. I've always been on automatic renewal, but haven't received any information yet on that domain expiring in September.

I've been looking into different places to host my site...and think I kind of like weebly...any thoughts on good ones? Either way it looks like I'll have to rebuild, but as long as it's pretty simple, I'm not too worried about that.

This is just what I wanted to do all day...ugh!
 
Looks like this has been extended to the end of April, 2012.
Has anybody attemped to switch yet? Anybody jumping ship and moving elsewhere?
Thanks,
Susan
 
I've moved my websites and have rebuilt them from the scratch.

The new improved www.LocalIndependentFramingExpert.com has been up a few months

My new shop site www.hollandframeshop.com is up and running and being added to each day.

I also have a website for my wife and for an artist I work with. My wifes is done and the other is about to be transistioned.

Time is running out and I am surprised how many framers who have MSOL are still not aware or are sitting by idle.
 
Well, I've been working on a new one from scratch also, and just want to polish it up some more before I make the jump. Am a little worried about how it will all go, but am almost ready.

John, your new sites look good. Mind if I ask who is hosting your sites and if you built with templates? If so, which one? At least they made getting control of your domain name a bit easier, got mine switched to Melbourne and out of Microsoft Office pretty simply.

Good luck to everyone!
 
j Paul said:
Time is running out and I am surprised how many framers who have MSOL are still not aware or are sitting by idle.
Click to expand...

Are you saying they are SOL??? ;)
 
Microsoft suggests to start switching by 3/31. They are offering a free 6 month trial. Your old site will vanish on 4/30. That's what they say. They've extended the date a few times, so I wonder if they will extend it again.

I'm wondering how much transition time that I will need.
Susan
 
Time to transition will be the initial learning curve and the time that it takes to re-create your existing site or to create a new one from scratch. You can copy/paste the text from an existing OLSB site but formatting, images, etc will have to be done as though you were starting from scratch. If you are familiar with the OLSB website interface, the O-365 interface is similar. If you had any custom add-on app, those apps will no longer function.

The monthly fee is mainly to pay for use of the collaboration features. If all you need is a website, there are less expensive options available from other traditional web hosts though $6 per month is relatively inexpensive even if you don't use all the features.

John, did you rebuild within O-365 or rebuild with a more traditional hosting account? The sites look nice.

Link to the official 0-365/OLSB FAQs
 
Reenie said:
John, your new sites look good. Mind if I ask who is hosting your sites and if you built with templates? If so, which one?
Click to expand...

Rennie, I purchased this product as I didn't want to be tied to any provided free by a hosting company incase they eventually went away as well. It is very easy to learn and has many very good features. I currently am hosting FREE with OOOwebhost.com but will most likely change my business account either to their paid service or somebody else. The LIFE site, my wifes site www.cleaningbs.com and my artist site probably will stay with them as they don't have the same requirements that I see my site needing soon.


Rick, I did a complete new build up with the above product. ( I continue to be indebted to you for all of your past help with MSOL)
 
Thanks for the link, John. I'll have to check into that. I have been building a site with Weebly, so far it's free, but I would upgrade it to transfer my own domain name, and to get rid of the 'free website' ad at the bottom. I think it's about $5/month. I am concerned about the same thing happening again though, - so I will definitely look into that product.

Thanks to both you and Rick for all the help with msol...it was good as it got me started with even getting a website - and I guess now it's time to move on!
 
I haven't made up my mind just yet either Susan........I know I have to act soon as the date now is end of April. Strangely enough; I wasn't aware of this until beginning of this year when I received an email and when I logged onto my account there was a note.

John...I might need some help.......I hate how they change things right when I started feeling comfortable in doing stuff.....am no website techie....
 
learning WordPress

We're moving from M'soft. My son speaks 'WordPress' fluently and set up a dummy site for us and I've been learning to tweak it, add images, add pages, etc. With the latest announcement and estimated final date from MS, I'm ready to make the switch. Luckily, my son will do all the 'legwork' for me, retrieve the domain key, set up the new site on a server in the US (I can't remember which one, but it's a paid service, relatively inexpensive).

WordPress itself is free and relatively easy to learn (the 'Dummies' book was helpful, I have to admit).
 
Rod,

Please make sure that your son understands that the MSFT domain registration key is NOT the same as the authcode used by typical registrars for transferring domain names. It is a middle step used to gain control of your domain name @ MelbourneIT before you can obtain a usable code to transfer the registraton elsewhere. Also make sure that the email address on file with the admin account for your domain is capable of receiving email.

That has caught many a web savvy person in unfriendly territory.
 
:(:(:( Achhhh! I have spent two hours and have gotten no where. Is it worth it? Guys if you are switching to 365, leave some time. I guess that the answers are there but you'll have to watch tutorials and look on forums to find out that your older computer doesn't support 365. :cry:
 
So did you build a whole new website???? I decided to go John's way and ordered Site Pro....it is very addictive!!!! I will switch in the next coming days...no longer staying with MSOL.
Hope all will go well.....sigh.....
 
Yup, this is tough. I've decided no more Office Live. I was directed to Wix, which is really cool. Now it is gettting confusing!
Susan
 
I'm going to be working on moving the domain registration for my brother-in-law's site over the weekend or next week, depending upon when he gets his email archived. I hope you did see the big notice that there is a significant chance that you can LOOSE all your archived email if you don't take proper steps. MSFT does not have any backups, so it will be lost forever.

I did see last night the MSFT has made changes to minimize the registrations transfers which get lost in the ether between MSFT and MIT.

After that, move the registration to GoDaddy from MIT. MIT = $35-$50 per year vs GD cost.

Once you have the registrar straightened out, then you can find the host of your choosing. We have our preference based upon US based support in a matter of minutes vs hours and also the servers satisfy hacker prevention requirements.

I don't mind helping anyone who is in need of moving their registration because it can get confusing due to the technicalities of MSFT being an MIT reseller. Send me a PM or email.
 
For those moving their registration to godaddy, here are a few coupon codes for checkout: (only one can be used at a time)

Current promo for xferring .coms is $7.99, incuding a 1 year extension to your current expiration date. (see banner on site)

$8.49/yr (~40% off) renewals/extensions: CJC795DOM (I just extended all of our domains, using this one)

20% off all hosting plans: CJCCHP20

Full service web hosting itself is usually $3-$5 per month, from most companies. Most of them offer the very popular CPANEL management tool. If you have several domains, sometimes a RESELLER account the best option to consider. This lets you pay a flat monthly fee to have a large number of domains.

Best regards,
Mike
 
Ok, I've been working away...I have our Metro Atlantic PPFA site pretty much designed and I'm ready to bring it life! Today is the day that I switch from Microsoft to Wordpress. Stay tuned. If I can give you a link, it worked! :) Now the fun starts.
Susan
 
Question for those in the know, what is the downside of moving over to the new MS hosting. I have had zero time to deal with this and just want to get it over with as painlessly as possible.
 
Jeff.
I think that no matter what, you'll need to put time into it. It seemed as if the new MS product wasn't for a small business. I never even got to see what their templates looked like. Look into Wix, Weebly, Wordpress.com, and I'm sure that there are others that were mentioned too. If you do the MIT, Go Daddy stuff it takes time too. Sorry,
Susan
 
Jeff,
Did you get an email from Skyline or something like that? They said that for $199 they would do it for you. I took the opportunity of Office Live going away as an opportunity to update my site. I think that the new one will look a little more updated and bring me more business. Honestly you can't wait until the last minute to figure it out-like I did. It takes a few weeks. Good luck!!! Let us know if we can help. There is a SUPER support system here. BIG THANKS TO RICK!!!
Susan
 
As long as I can shift the existing site and later edit it I'm good. My site needs tons of work but I'm swamped so I could edit a page a night once it's moved. My site is very basic but filled with tons of prices and products so it gets the local attention I am looking for right now. I guess I should read the info from MS in my final notice e-mail.
 
Jeff,

There's no shifting to the MSFT O-365 product. Though the interface looks and functions identically, there is No Way to transfer an OLSB site to O-365. It must be rebuilt from scratch.

MSFT definition of Small Business is 25 - 100 employees. Less than 25 employees are Micro-Business by their definition. O-365 is intended for collaboration, file sharing, conferencing, etc and public facing websites are not much of a priority.

Depending upon the domain expiration date, I would transfer the registration from MSFT to MIT using the "Keep existing DNS settings" option. That way, your site will stay live until MSFT pulls the plug but you will have full control of your domain registration. The reason that I suggest moving registration from MIT to GD is cost. MIT is $35-$50 per year. GD is $8 +/-.

It only takes a matter of a few minutes to gain control of the domain name @ MIT. Moving it to GD is the same as any other registrar move.

Wix, Weebly and Yola have been popular choices for websites as well as Wordpress.

I sent Susan a set of screenprints walking through the process.

Here is a PDF with the screenprints. It is a 3.7MB file so it may take a while to load into your browser. From there, you can save it.

The screenprint starts with logging into your MSFT account and goes through moving the registration to GoDaddy.

WOW!! has the timelimit to edit posts been increased?
 
Guys, listen to the words of wisdom from Rick. He knows what he is doing and really there are quite a few of us out there who would be in domain limbo without him. He has taken the time to make a file to help us through the steps. Wow!

I bet if check it out within the next day or so, you can see the difference between the Office live and Wordpress product for our PPFA site.

Old www.metroatlanticppfa.com (purple)
New www.metroatlanticppfa.wordpress.com

It'll change after the domain gets to it's new home (that's what Rick helped with.)

I'm still tweaking but I've got my shop site to finish too.
Susan
 
Also one other word of advice--save everything! I'm not a techie person, but you might cut and paste each page into Word and also do a screen shot of each page and save. No sense in reinventing the wheel with your new site.
 
I just built a demo site for my BIL using YOLA today. Learning curve is minimal.... possibly easier than MSFT-OLSB.

If YOLA is something that you want to consider, my recommendation is to get control of your domain at MIT and move the registration to YOLA instead of GoDaddy. There's a YOLA tutorial for that. It will make domain and email setup much more convenient for the less host-savvy people since you won't have to deal with all the name server, mx, c-name, etc settings to get things functional.

The main thing is to gain control of your domain registration @ MIT before MSFT pulls the plug.
 
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