How to get a Free Website and Domain Name

Web sites and domain names. Yep. Microsoft is giving it away, free.

You can spend some bucks registering a domain name, and a few more to have a company host your website, or you can get it all for free. Here's how.

Things You'll Need

• Nothing. If you're on the internet, you're all set.

Instructions

1. Microsoft, of all people, will give you a website and domain name absolutely free. Though aimed at small businesses, anyone can register and set up a website.

2. Head to office.live.com and click on the button that says: "Office Live Small Business -- Sign Up for Free."

3. Fill in the simple registration information...it's basically name, city/state/zip, and email.

   You'll be asked some business questions like "Number of employees". Just answer as best you can, even if the answer is zero, or one (yourself!).

4. Use the simple form that pops up to register a domain name, and build a website. You can have the whole thing in operation in 15 minutes.

Tips & Warnings

• The free option works with website templates, and there's a limit to how sophisticated you can make the site. Still, there are plenty of options to work with.

• There are tools to add images, tables, slide shows, and so on.

• You also get free email, of course.

• You can add Google Adsense to your site (but it's not that easy...if you run into problems, leave a comment here to let me know, and I'll help you out).

• Yep...you can get more than one site and more than one domain name. As far as I know, there's no limit.

• The Microsoft Office Live Basic sites are ASP based, meaning that they are similar to -- but slightly different -- from pure HTML-based sites. It can be awkward at first, but not too bad. You'll catch on quick enough.

Resources

• Free websites from Microsoft
• Example of a free site built with Microsoft Office Live
• Another example of a free site