Google Sites, which launched a little under two years ago, have given businesses and consumers a way to quickly build their own websites with no HTML knowledge required, making it relatively easy for anyone without a technical background to build a simple website. Now, Google is making it infinitely easier for anyone to create sleek, attractive websites with new feature Templates.
For those that aren’t familiar with this product, Sites is the reincarnation of Jotspot, which Google acquired back in 2006 (though the two products look totally different). The product is Google’s easy-to-use website and wiki builder that’s widely used by businesses, though there’s a consumer option available.
Google Sites now has a fully stocked gallery of public templates that can be used by both consumers and businesses. Google has also created templates that are targeted for business use. Templates let you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page payouts, navigation links, theming and more. And Businesses using Google Apps will also have a private area where employees can share proprietary site templates, which can be made via Sites’ recently launched API, with coworkers. This is actually useful to organizations, such as the Boy Scouts of America, which wants to share templates for chapters over the nation to launch as their platform.
Sites will be free for all Google Apps customers (both paid and free) as well as for consumers. While Sites’ templates can be easily used for collaborative workspaces like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites and employee profile pages.
Though templates isn’t a monumental additions to Google Sites, it is a complimentary, easy-to-use and free feature that’s included in Google Apps. The tie-in between the two only reinforces the strategy Google has of continuing to make Google Apps more appealing to businesses to perhaps take a significant bite out of Microsoft’s market share.
Didn’t Google Sites have themes for a while?!
Templates shouldn’t be confused with Themes.
Themes make your site prettier, and cannot be created or shared by users (though there are lots of themes available and can be modified with custom CSS).
Templates allow users to, for example, create a new type of “List” page with predefined columns and settings. One could create a template for “Upcoming Events” and easily use the template on 100 different sites.
Ah yes, maybe templates are new, but themes have been around for a while…
Google docs/sites still has a long way to go to match up to SharePoint, but you can’t beat the pricePoint.
google site need to be more like trac.
Hm… I can only see the 52 (ugly) basic themes. Where did they put up new ones?
Ah… should have read twice. Templates. Well, but I don’t see new templates. Where did you get the screenshot from, Leena?
Until Google adds page-level permissions to Sites, I will consider it mostly useless.
Google Sites users have been crying out for this one feature since the service was launched – its a basic feature on most Wiki platforms. Surely, it can’t be that hard!
Yup completely agreed….
Yo GOOGLE, IMPLEMENT THE FRIGGN PAGE-BASED-PERMISSIONS already.
Ouch… now I found it. You gotta delete your existing site and create a new one. Stupid.
Then, there are around 40 or more. Here is some example:
https://sites.g...churchtemplate/
Wait, so this is different from Themes, and it’s different from “Page Templates?”
I’m confused.
You mean google sites? I hate it. Broken links. With link address more than a half a page.
And few templates just to save the face of it????
Sorry but I don’t like Google sites.
The most basic feature missing in Google Sites till date is of form submission, I hope they have some in-built apps in the template for this.
You can create forms using Google Docs, which allows you to create a web based form from a spreadsheet and then insert that doc into your Google Sites page. Very easy to use and allows you to receive updates when the form has been changed/filled out.
This more or less like Zoho Business. Do check the Control Panel of ZB. You can collaborate and much more and easy to use and much more functionality available.
Thanks,
Charu
Its very strange (and annoying) that you can’t apply a template to an existing site – you must create a new one.
Its also a real shame that templates can’t be imported or exported. In fact they can only be used within your domain.
As for templates and themes, they must not be confused with page templates which are really page types…
Come on Google you can do much better than this!