Microsoft Office Live Small Business Community

I've talked to a lot of 'people' about this, most frequently my friend Richard (He has a domain name like I do, but he uses some other host ... I believe it's something along the lines of... GoDaddy or DomainDaddy ... something like that) He knows every kind of programming language I've heard of, and many kinds that I haven't. What I'm getting at is that 70% of everything I want to do with my website requires "FTP"... I know three things about it. (1) I most likely do not have it. (2) It requires some form of Support (FTP Support), and (3) It stands for "File Transfer Protocol" ... I think. Can ANYONE explain to me (1) What it is (2) Are there ANY substitutions for it, even if it's just for SOME parts, and (3) any and all dates and/or time frames of if/when Office Live Small Business will be getting this? And if it's not too much trouble, can you explain it to me as simple as humanly possible? Any input is greatly appreciated.

Sound like you already know, No Office Live does not support FTP and probably never will.  FTP is just a file transfer protocol, there are others that will work as well, Office Live, I believe just uses HTTP.  Most programs allow you save your content into a folder, which if you set the Office Live webfolder connector, there should be a network folder in My Computer that you can save your files into, don't even need FTP or a FTP program.

I very sincerely thank you for answering me. But I have next to no idea what you're talking about. I briefly looked at other questions that were asked at the top of this forum, and I heard about this "Webfolder Connector", but I still don't understand a thing about it... Would you mind explaining?

If you enable third party design tools, you will be provided with a link to download the connector.

 how about t he fact that the connector crashes my systems

If I am uploading more that 50 files, it just locks up my system. Only thing to recover is to hard restart PC. This happens both on my Vista laptop and my XP desktop. On my XP, it also asks for my credentials about 8 times when trying to upload, even though i have told it to save. this is not a problem when FTP is an option. 

I hope the FTP option becomes available

Have you tried loading a smaller number of files?

Hey, so FTP, like you noted means File Transfer Protocol. An FTP program, simply allows your "local browser/server" (files on your computers hard drive) to directly transfer files to your web domains "remote" server. Microsoft does not allow specific FTP use, but as you can tell by the image and document uploader, they use a very basic public version which allows you to upload specific documents and images to your websites/domains servers. These documents and images can be downloaded or published on your website.

 So why FTP? FTP allows you to do a hell of a lot more. It allows you to upload full folders, containing thousands of pieces or images, in addition to additional scripts, sheets, and code which will dictate how those folders are opened and run from your website. Simply put, it allows your website to access more complex programs to display and broadcast. Programs of this nature would include CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), XML, and most intrigungly, FLASH. The beauty of flash is that it is one of the most interactive and generally used computer language. Almost all flash require separate folders for images, thumbnails, and scripts. So, Office Live not FTP does severely limit your designing capability, however it was made for small businesses and personnel who do not have extensive computer programming knowledge.

 If you check out my company's website www.amorfati-arts.com  and others our company has produced, you'll see we've been able to use the Office Live platform and add many additional features so that it can compete with higher end websites (we even used Flash! albeit, basic). If you have any questions or would be interested in our design services, fill out our form after checking out our other websites we designed: www.amorfati-arts.com/website.aspx

Sincerely,

 Dominique | AmorFati Arts, LLC

www.amorfati-arts.com | info@amorfati-arts.com

You forgot to metion the security problem with FTP.