If you’ve got a green business, we’d like to hear from you! 

In the coming weeks, we will be kicking off a special “Green Business” promotion on sites like Microsoft Office Live (www.officelive.com) and MSN’s Live Earth Web site (http://liveearth.msn.com/).  We will be creating a special section for “Green” organizations and featuring several Microsoft Office Live customer Web sites that serve ecological purposes.

And now for our technical (not really) definition of a “green” business: a green organization or business is one that engages in initiatives to improve business practices around the use of renewable resources, the environmental and human rights impact of business practices. This includes organizations or businesses that may want to operate in a socially responsible manner, as well as protect the environment.

Nominate your green business

You can nominate your organization by e-mailing Green@OfficeLiveCommunity.com with the following information:

§   Name of organization

§   Your name

§   Company web site (URL)

§   Your e-mail address

§   Description of organization- 50 word limit.

§   Why your business should be featured- 100 word limit.

§   How does your organization meet the definition of a “green” above- 100 word limit

All entries must be received by 7/10/07 to be considered eligible.

Want Exposure?
If selected, we may post a thumbnail (small picture) of your Web site and a link to it on sites like Office Live, MSN and others, which could mean great exposure for your green business.  For official promotion rules, please go here. 

Selection Criteria

We’re keeping this simple. There are just two criteria we will use to pick our winners:

  1.     Quality of your Microsoft Office Live Web site

  2.     Impact of green issue(s) being addressed by your organization

  Submit your entry TODAY!

Over the last 5 months, we have worked on 3 minor releases to Microsoft Office Live, and have constantly made improvements to the quality of our service & additions to the features in Microsoft Office Live.

Some of the feature work we have done over these last 3 releases based on customer feedback has been:

1. Launching Domain redelegation to resolve customer reported issues with bringing their existing domain to Microsoft Office Live.
2. Adding support for .de domain in Germany and .eu domain in the European markets that Microsoft Office Live is present in.
3. Launching adManager in the UK and France markets (to allow users in those markets to purchase keyword for advertising).
4. Allowing customers to enter an alternate email address contact that allows us to send them password reset information in case they forget their password.
5. Microsoft Office Live side bar

Besides these feature additions, our more important work has been:
1. Work in improving the reliability and quality of our service – we’re very proud of this work, since it helps all our customers!
2. Working with many individual customers to resolve the issues they reported.
3. Completing the upgrade process for our beta customers with 99.62% success rate.

Our team continues to make constant improvements to our service based on your feedback. We really enjoy being able to release often to deliver updates that make you happy and make your businesses successful,

On behalf of the Live Site updates team,
Arun Rajappa
Senior Program Manager Lead

But for now … you can still do it. Several Microsoft Office Live experts and other community site enthusiasts have notified us of various workarounds that can help you customize your header.

Below are three of the best we’ve seen. Check these out (follow the instructions!) and let us know what works best for you. One caveat: These workarounds have not been formally tested in-house by Microsoft Office Live.  

1.      “Header image transplants” from RxDave’s Prescriptions for Office Live Basics: Any image, photo or graphic may be placed in the header using the Site Designer.  First, size the image (to match the header size) using a photo editor, and then upload it to your Image Gallery. Under Theme, click on General (no photos) if you want to remove the stock photo.  Finally, click Logo and select the image from your gallery.  

2.      “Hack No. 18” from Office Live @ Axcede.net:

·         Create a header image (preferably as a GIF) 780 pixels wide X 113 pixels high. (These are the default measurements of the header area. You can't make it any smaller. If you make a smaller GIF, the Microsoft Office Live Basics header will appear in rest of the area.)

·         Go to Site Designer and choose the Header tab.

·         Erase the Site Title.

·         Erase the Tagline.

·         Upload and add the header image you created in step 1.

·         In the Position dropdown, choose Next to title.

·         Click the OK button to save and close the designer.

Remember that you are simply overlaying the default header area with an image. If you have a full width site, make the background color of the header image the same as the theme you have used. Otherwise the image may not display properly.

3.   From “jrepublic” on Office Live Community site:

·         Launch Site Designer.

·         Click the Header and remove the Title and Slogan.

·         Click Theme - General (no photos).

·         Looks familiar? Please proceed to the next step.

·         Upload your logo in the Document Gallery (I edited mine with 760x131 instead of 780x131).

·         Go back to Site Designer and use the HTML module.

·         Use the script below and paste it to the HTML module:

·         <script language="javascript">parent.document.getElementById('IWS_WH_Elem_Header').innerHTML='<div><img

·         src="/documents/yourimage.gif"></div>';</script> ·          

·         Replace yourimage.gif with the file you have uploaded in step 5.

Enjoy!

Since Image Uploader somewhat resizes your image, it is impossible to insert your logo and completely cover the header (theme) in the background. Now, you can completely cover the header with your own logo by using the script above.  

Update:

You can also replace the header with a flash (swf) file:

Create your flash banner/logo/header and upload the html and swf files to the document gallery

Insert the following code using HTML Module:

<script language="javascript">parent.document.getElementById('IWS_WH_Elem_Header').innerHTML='<div><iframe src="http://yoursite.com/documents/yourhtmlfile.html" width="760px" height="131px" align="center" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0px" marginheight="0px" scrolling="no"</iframe></div>';</script>

Just change the width and height accordingly.

 Want more fixes and discussion? Check out our discussion boards on replacing the header. And good luck with your Web site.

Monte Enbysk