Hi everyone,

We would love for you to share your opinions and use cases about Sites
with us. In particular who is using it, how they are using it and what
they like about it. We're asking for this information in order to get
a better understanding of the types of ways people are using Sites.
This in turn will help us focus our developmental efforts in ways that
are ever more useful to you our growing community.

I'll go ahead and leave this post open for a week to give everyone
enough time to enter what they want to say.

Thanks everyone!! We look forward to hearing how, why and who is using
Sites.

Mike
The Google Sites Guide

My Site: http://www.glaciology.net

Who: A glacier and sea level scientist.

How: Advertising the research of myself and my cooperation partners.

What i like: Easy to maintain. Good for small groups. Google Gadget
support.

Primary wish for improvement: that the URL starts with www.glaciology.net

We are using it to create an Intranet for our small (about 45 person)
company.  The Intranet we are creating is more of a Wiki format.
Because there are limited ways to control access, each department has
to have it's own site.  This is a big detriment because there is no
way (I know of) to search across multiple sites.  Many of our people
are cross functional and have to go from site to site to find the
content they are looking for.  We would really like the ability search
across Gmail, Google Docs and Google Sites.

On May 13, 2:01 pm, Sites Help Owner wrote:

Thanks for asking. We'd like to be using it for your intra/extranet.
Unfortunately, we can't fully deploy until:
1. we're able to fine-tune user permissions (page/section level)
2. the URL problems are cleared up (/e/ vs. /a/ for non-apps vs. apps
users)

The two problems reinforce each other....because of the permissions
issue we need to create separate sites for different permission
groups. But then the URL problem is even more acute because we can't
have reliable links between the sites we've created.

So we wait...hoping that Google is truly behind this product and will
work out the bugs soon enough.

Tim

Whoops. Just saw the notice from last week that /a/ vs /e/ is fixed.
Yippee! One down, one to go. Thanks for listening, Googlers!

I am trying to use Google Sites as a lightweight project / issue
tracking system.  Essentially, what I want to do is set up a number of
pages that act as "status" containers for a problem:

  Problem # 1234
  Assigned To: Bob
  Description
    Can't worschnitz the gronkulator.
  Solutions Tried
   * foo
   * bar
  Attached Files
   * Solution Sketch (profile).pdf
   * Solution Sketch (plan).pdf

However, it's essential that people be able to view "open" issues and
"assigned" issues for this to work.  I don't need a granular user-
based system, just an easy way to separate open issues into "Finance",
"Construction" and "Design" areas.

Unfortunately, I can't see any way to achieve this because there is no
way to embed dynamically updating lists of **any** sort (except for
"Most Recent", which isn't that useful in this context).

There would be three ways to fix my problem:

1. List filtering.  Let me build a central list, and then embed a
Gadget that only shows items where a field matches a certain value.
2. Search embedding.  There's no way to embed a Gadget that runs pre-
canned searches, e.g. show me all items matching "Assigned To Finance"
3. Tag support.  Mark pages with arbitrary tag phrases, and then a
provide a Gadget that lists all pages marked with that tag.

Those are all basic solutions which I think would add a great deal of
value.  However, if I was going blue-sky, I'd want to see lists that
actively tie their data to a wiki page, not just link to it.  This
would allow embedding of a Gadget that showed the related list data as
"metadata" on the page itself, and would allow automatic 2-way
linking.

Oh, and last but not least:  PLEASE add a templating system, or at
least a way to copy an existing page!  I'm getting sick of copying and
pasting...

Thanks for listening to my grumbles!

I've used it for:

1) Site to share pictures and stories about our new dog amongst family

2) Store assignments and homework for homeschooled kids (one site for
each child, private between that child and parents).  Especially
convenient where one child was visiting friends in another state for a
few weeks and was able to sign on and keep up with their work, as well
as communicate with us.  Assignments were scanned and posted, child
puts work in a new page, comments, or uploaded files

3) Site for sharing development of content for a book with a group of
people - notes, pictures, pdf proofs, etc

4) Help site for PBX users to refer to - makes it easy for me to add
content as things come up.

5) Telephony engineering site - details on studies of analog/digital
conversion, etc. shared with a group of people to contribute in shared
development of improved audio quality

6) Site that stores all my business development and status notes
(private)

7) Place to put some recordings from a conference to share with
certain people.

Amongst many others.  It's a great service, and the only glitch has
been access from collaborators outside my apps domain, which appears
to be fixed? with the extra login box below.  Now I have to train
people to look for that...

On May 13, 2:01 pm, Sites Help Owner wrote:

Oh, I missed one really important thing.  When I click on "Link" while
editing, PLEASE let me link to a new page!

It's the one thing that wikis do so well -- creating scaffolds of
empty pages which we can fill in later.  Without this, adding a link
means:

(1) Finish editing page which will have link
(2) Create new sub-page and save
(3) Return to original page and add link

When it's much more natural to:

(1) Stay in page which needs the link
(2) Link to a new (blank) page.
(3) Finish editing
(4) Click on the link to start adding content for the new section.

Hello Mike,

We now have 17 Google sites (and growing). We are a small marketing
consulting firm with 15 home-based staff with clients across North
America.

We use Google sites for:
- communicating with our clients - we are testing three customer
facing microsites - to track issues, deliverables, status reports and
shared files. Our customers have access to these sites.
- communicating project related actiities and information internally -
we use google sites to track information relating to client projects
but which is for internal use only - shared by team members .
- communicate internally - for tracking the status of issues and for
communicating HR, training, sales, and systems
- temporary projects  - for example, we moved ISPs last week and had a
site up managing the status of all the activities required to migrate.

When the formatting capabilities withing google sites doesn't meet our
needs, we use google docs and publish.

This has revolutionized the way we communicate internally and to our
clients. They love it.

We do have a current issue regarding sharing our site with our clients
outside of our domain. Where do we go for help?

Cheers

On May 13, 2:01 pm, Sites Help Owner wrote:

A "Create new page" button in the Links screen already!  Don't know if
this is your doing or not, Mike, but thanks -- Google rocks!

On May 16, 2:14 pm, GuruJ wrote:

Hi Mike, We are a Norwegian company of 22 people (and growing) and we
use Sites for our Intranet (since May 9 2008).
We have just started a Balanced Scorecard process and find that the
wiki is a perfect engine for this!
We have created a small guide-line for the sitemap: under the Home
page we only allow four pages - Financial, Customer, Internal
Processes and Learning and Growth. Then we encourage all our
contributors to align the content within these "perspectives".
Thanks for making Sites such a great tool!

On 13 Mai, 20:01, Sites Help Owner wrote:

We use sites for a high school, in Spain.
I intend to use it to provide info about the school (like a website),
as well to create restricted sites for teachers teams.
I like that it is very easy to create sites without programming. Every
student can do it in just 20 minutes training. And you don't need no
hosting no special programm instaled in the computers.
I HATE the lack of abity to share the sites with, let's say, twenty
people without having to type their e-mails one by one. Admins should
be able to classify users in groups, and then share sites (and
calendars, by the way) with all the group in one single step.

Great product, anyway.

I'm using Google Sites to as an improved Home-Page (something between
a blog, a personal web site and a social-network-page) in which I can
list, update and organize my articles, contents, comics, files,
documents, thoughts. And best of all a place to share them with the
web.

anche io l' ho utilizzato per qualcosa di simile, ho cresto www.accademiaimpro.com

e tu? così almeno ci scambiamo pareri ed opinioni in lingua madre :-)

ciao, andrea.

On 22 Mag, 17:35, Marco Tessarotto wrote:

I am currently using an OpenSource Php solution which is easy to use,
but it is way too much work to keep it updated, contentwise and
softwarewise, making sure that it is at the latest security level and
such.
So I am currently evaluating switching to GoogleSites because it is
easy, not too fancy as this is not what I need, plus who does not know
Google?

Anyways, the site is to show what I have done to my Jeep, share the
pictures, and calendar of events / competitions I am attending.

Ben

Created this site for taking a Microsoft Research project called
Senseweb and use it as a K-12 School educational project.
Looking for ideas to make this site really cool.

http://sites.google.com/site/senseweb2school/

Things to do.
1. Web Site hit stats
2. Search bar
3. Be able to list this site when anyone does a Google search from
google.com.
4. Be able to add a page "like Facebook". E.g the project would have
one science teacher from each school. I would like a page where I can
post the mug shots of the people involved and be able to arrange the
pics as a org chart.

Cheers

On May 13, 10:01 am, Sites Help Owner wrote:

We are using it as webpage for local chinese community.

http://sites.google.com/a/charlestonchineseassociation.org/cagc/Home

Pros:
1. Much easier to use than Google Pages and much more useful
2. good combination of general website design and a blog style
mechanism (recent announcements)

Cons (more like improvement suggestions):
1. seems to me Custom URL can't directly point to a particular site
address. My workaround was to use Google Page as the homepage, and go
to site from there through a Enter link
2. it would be great to have some more logo choices  for people who
don't want to use google logo and also lack skills to design their own

Anyways, I like it a lot.

On May 13, 2:01 pm, Sites Help Owner wrote:

Use it on two sites, different purposes:

Site One: Student Organization. Great for its ease of use, simplicity
is good for a variety of members.

Site Two: Small Business. It's handy for us to start keeping a little
more organized.

Needs to have a FORUM/MESSAGE Board feature!!
Would like to be able to see all file uploads in one 'overall cabinet'
or something.
Would like to be able to export lists into something usable or link to
spreadsheets!
Might be nice to have a password recovery system in place (so admin
doesn't have to keep reseting passwords).

I really appreciate the service though. We're looking forward to
continued great development from the google staff. Thanks!

-G

On Jun 1, 8:45 pm, cowboybebop98 wrote:

I have been tryiing to find out
HOW TO WRITE A BOOK
AND BE ABLE TO ADD CHAPTERS

THANK YOU FOR SITES.

I am writing the book
and add a New PAGE
for each Chapter.

LOOKS TERRIFIC.

THANKS

On May 13, 11:01 am, Sites Help Owner wrote:

IT NEEDS A SPELL CHECKER

On May 13, 11:01 am, Sites Help Owner wrote:

HOW CAN I ADD A LIKE TO MY EMAIL
SO OTHERS CAN EMAIL ME?

LVKen7 at gmail dot com

On May 13, 11:01 am, Sites Help Owner wrote:

Mike,

I am working on a project, and I trying it on google.

I am trying to create a website that crafts a customer interface with
the seven elements:  context, content, community, customization,
communication, connection, and commerce to deliver and build
relationships with customers.

Regards,

Leticia Hernandez
ChinLet Collectibles

On May 13, 1:01 pm, Sites Help Owner wrote:

Hello there and thanks for the nice service,

here is my wish list:

1. Customizable meta tags for web pages, which is necessary for searh
engine optimization
2. Customizable Page Title
2. Customize favicon for each site
3. Importing a site, htm/html website
4. and last but not least, edit html capability for whole page.

Thank you and good luck :-)

On May 13, 2:01 pm, Sites Help Owner wrote:

Hi there,

we are using it for a Rock Climbing Club in Brazil. It was really easy
to make a simple and useful site!
You can see it in www.ceteresopolitano.org

Things that I would like to be improved in Google Sites:
1 - Choose whenever you add a link if you want it to open in a new
window or not.
2 - No automatic links for images (because the user will go out of the
site enviroment)
3 - Better integration with Pictures. You can see what I made with
picasaweb in www.ceteresopolitano.org/fotos
4 - Upload HTML files, just like in Google Pages. I am using google
pages to host html files that i put into the site creating google
gadgets
5 - Favicon. Why can't we personalize our favicon?
6 - An easier way to populate lists. They're great, but it takes too
long to make big lists.
7 - A new field in lists of HTML type. So, I could insert small images
and put link on it.

That's it for now!
Thanks for all great services!!

Mauro

On 13 maio, 12:01, Sites Help Owner wrote:

My site: http://sites.google.com/site/jim-in-austin/

About: I am using it as a personal site. I have migrated a number of
blogs and free-standing web pages into the structure. No collaboration
or other users ... at least not yet.