Re-creating the About Us page

Okay, your Home page is now all set. Let's move on to the About Us page. Yes, I know:Office Live Small Business has already created an About Us page for your starter website. The trouble is, it doesn't use the same template as your Home page.

Now that's a big no-no. Remember, we agreed that all web pages on your site will use your template. So, we'll have to find a way to apply your template to the About Us page.

Unfortunately, none exists. Once you create a web page, it's married to its template; in the present version of Office Live Small Business, at least. Your only option is to create it again using a new template.

1. Go to Page Manager.

2. Click the New Page link or icon on the toolbar. The Create web page dialog pops up as shown.

   

3. The first step in creating a web page is to choose a template for it. The Create web page dialog lists Standard Templates, which come bundled with Office Live Small Business, and Custom Templates, which you build yourself. Notice that the template that you built on earlier, Base Template, appears as a custom template in the selection box on the left. Select Base Template and click Next. The dialog asks you to Choose page properties.
4. Enter About Us as the Page title. This title appears in the title bar of the browser when you view it.




The title About Us is appropriate when referring to companies, groups, organizations, or businesses that involve several people. If you're a magician, for example, and your website touts your services for children's birthday parties, then you may want to change the title to About Me, or About Steve, the Magician (assuming you're Steve, of course). It sounds a little less pretentious.

For my website, I'm going to change the title to About the Author, which is more appropriate for a website that's dedicated to a book.

5. Type aboutus in the web address text box.

   The web address of the page will now be aboutus.aspx.

   It's a good idea to match a page's title and its web address. Because my page title is About the Author, I'll enter abouttheauthor in this text box. If your page title is About Steve the Magician, you should enter aboutstevethemagician here.

6. Select the Overwrite existing page checkbox.

   You're creating a new About Us page. But a page by that name already exists. By selecting this checkbox, you're telling Office Live Small Business to go ahead and overwrite it.

7. Select the Show this page in the navigation bar checkbox.
8. Notice that Office Live Small Business automatically enters About Us (or About Steve the Magician, or whatever you entered as the page's title) in the Navigation title text box.
9. Click Finish.

10. The Create web page dialog goes away and the About Us page you just created appears in the Page Editor as shown:

    




Hey! How come this picture shows both About Us and About the Author?

Elementary, my dear Watson! Because I didn't call my page aboutus.aspx. Had I done so, Office Live Small Business would have replaced the original aboutus.aspx with my new aboutus.aspx.Because I called it abouttheauthor.aspx, the original aboutus.aspx is still intact. If you're in the same boat as I am in, you'll have to delete the About Us page. I'll show you how to do that later in this article.

11. Select the text Page Header in Zone 2, and overwrite it with About Us (or About Steve the Magician, or whatever).
12. Save your work and preview the page.
13. Close the preview window and return to Page Editor.

What just happened?

You replaced the About Us page that Office live Small Business automatically created for you with a new page that uses your custom page template. As we discussed earlier, it's a good idea to use a common template for all of the pages on your website. Hence this exercise.

Have a go hero – write copy for your about us page

The About Us page is for introducing your business to visitors. Do it concisely; nobody really has the time to read a five page profile. Here's the copy that I'm using for my website:

About the Author:

Rahul Pitre has been writing software of one sort or another for twenty-five years, the last dozen or so of which he has spent developing mostly websites and web applications. He runs Acxede, a software consulting and training firm in New York, where he oversees web application and content development for a variety of clients. He holds a Masters degree in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems.

Okay, it's your turn. Here's a rule of thumb that'll serve you well as you write some copy for this page:

Write about what people will want to know about you; not what you want to tell people about yourself.

Don't know where to start? Here are some points you might want to consider:

1. What you do.
2. How long you've been in business.
3. The area that you serve. I highly recommend including your area and ZIP code in the copy. People often Google for phrases like Magicians in NY 10701. If you mention your general area and ZIP code in your text, there's a better chance of people finding you through search engines.

4. Are you an authorized dealer for some big company?

   Again, people often search for phrases such as authorized Sony service center NY 10701.

5. Have you received awards or citations for excellence?
6. Are you a member of the Better Business Bureau or the local merchants' association?
7. If your services are professional in nature, do you have the necessary qualifications? Licenses? Registrations? Insurance requirements?

If you prefer writing conversational text, write it in short paragraphs. Alternatively, you can use a combination of text and bullet points. But, keep it short. And for heaven's sake, don't write a mission statement.

Remember to write the text in a plain text editor such as Notepad; not in a word processor.

Re-creating the Contact Us page

Now let us now create the Contact Us page again using your site's template.

Time for action – re-creating the Contact Us page

1. Go to Page Manager.
2. Click the New Page link or icon on the toolbar. The Create web page dialog pops up.
3. Select Base Template and click Next. The dialog asks you to Choose page properties.
4. Enter Contact Us as the Page title. This title appears in the title bar of the browser when you view it.
5. Type contactus in the web address textbox.
6. Select the Overwrite existing page checkbox.
7. Select the Show this page in the navigation bar checkbox.
8. Click Finish.
9. The Create web page dialog goes away and the Contact Us page you just created appears in the Page Editor.
10. Select the text Page Header in Zone 2, and overwrite it with Contact Us.
11. Save your work and preview the page.

What just happened?

You replaced the Contact Us page that Office live Small Business automatically created for you with a new page that uses your custom page template.

The Contact Us page is kind of unique. You might have noticed that the page you just replaced had a form for visitors to contact you. Normally, you'd have to write a little program to process the information they provide. The program would extract the information from the form and e-mail it to you. Thankfully, Office Live Small Business has a built-in component that does the job admirably. All that you need to do is to set the e-mail address at which you wish to receive the e-mails.

Because you re-created the page, that form is now gone. The reason why I'm deferring it for now is that you haven't worked your way through a few prerequisites yet.

Creating the Privacy Policy page

you have to create your website's footer , you created a link to your website's "as yet non existent" privacy policy as shown:

Let's now create a page that states your privacy policy and activate the link to it in the footer.