Very simply put, Advanced Design Features let you customize the headers, footers, and navigation bar of your web site. You also get to create your own page templates and manipulate your site's CSS. Many of you have been very vocal about the inability to customize these features in the past and with the latest version, Office Live Small Business finally gives you the ability to do so.
But wait. There's a catch. You can't simply go and type in custom HTML for your header or footer; you'll have to build an XML document using Extended Stylesheet Language (XSL) and then transform the document using XSL Transformation (XSLT). Now, you don't have to be scared of these acronyms because they begin with an X and you're not exactly clear on how to pronounce them. At the same time, there's a good reason why these features are called advanced - you must keep in mind that using these features is not something a novice can manage to master in fifteen minutes. If you don't know exactly what these X-words mean, it's a good sign that you shouldn't poke around.
Office Live is not simply a web site-building tool; it's an application platform. It's meant to be used by people with various skill levels. Take your computer, for example. You probably use it to type letters, check your e-mail, and manage your Office Live site. Your kids, most likely, can do much more with it. And skilled programmers can write their own applications. Same is the case with the Office Live platform. Do-it-yourselfers, who are not geeks, can quickly build a web site while folks adept at using the platform's developer-oriented features can customize web sites and business applications. The developer-oriented features are more for the benefit of the developer community who can customize your sites and applications or build custom ones for you.
I don't intend to scare you away from using the Advanced Design Features. After all, it's not rocket science and anybody can learn it. But that doesn't necessarily mean you can start fiddling around with the XSL stylesheets that drive your web site without a complete understanding of the technology that drives these features. If you understand XSL transformations, customize your web site by all means. But if you don't, take my advice - either learn the technology or find someone who does.
There is one Advanced Design Feature, however, that you can use safely and to great effect: templates. You can design and format a page to your heart's content and then save it as a template. Then on, you can use the template to build new web pages, which saves you the trouble of designing and formatting each page individually as you had to do in the past.
Now that you're aware of the pitfalls, let's jump into the Advanced Design Features.
Advanced Design Features are not enabled automatically on your web site. Follow these steps to activate them:
- Log in to your Office Live Small Business account and click Web Site in the left navigation pane. Page Manager appears on your screen.
- Click on the Site actions tile to pull down the Site actions menu as shown in Figure 1, and then choose Activate advanced design features.
Figure 1: Activating advanced design features
- The confirmation dialog shown in Figure 2 pops up.
Figure 2: Advanced design features activation confirmation
< br> Click OK. The dialog disappears and Page manager refreshes to shows the first signs of change by displaying an additional Save as template against each page, as shown in Figure 3. The advanced design features are now enabled.
"Figure 3: Save as template" links indicate that advanced design features are enabled
Note: Page Manager may not refresh depending on your browser settings. If you don't see the link, refresh the page in your browser.
All right. So you activated advanced design features. What exactly does that buy you? We'll see in the next part of this tutorial.