Google Sites "New!"

[markwilliamson2001]

I am seriously looking at this for a primary school's website!

You can easily setup google calendar, which intergrates with the website you can create. There are several website templates you can use, and other google apps that integrate with the site. Its also very simple and user friendly (being a google app, this is quite normally the case). It seems to be a free viable alternative to MS sharepoint, but without the major costs!).

 

Just wondering what other people's thoughts were on this?

 

M.

[Edu-IT]

Can you modify the templates at all? I mean can you add your own branding to it, headers, colours etc? Also will the site you produce contain Google AdWords? Those can be unsightly on a school website.

[markwilliamson2001]

I am still playing at the moment, but it appears you can edit the templates (albeit it is slightly limited, but you can edit almost all the site, as well as including your own logo). You can edit the site's colour scheme, and the layout, including width, navigation bars, etc etc.

 

I am not sure about Google Adwords, but you might be able to turn this off somewhere.

 

Mark

[Edu-IT]

I've just looked at the demo sites and I can't actually see any adverts. Looks quite good.

[markwilliamson2001]

Well I spent about 1.5 hours on it last night fiddling and came up with this tester page:

 

Home (Malvern Hills Primary School)

 

I apologise for the beer pic, but I was just messing. The only issue I have so far is that the table rendering in IE7 is terrible! Cell alignment and the such like just didnt work at all, no matter what I tried.. :-(

 

I know this is new (v1) but on the wishlist would be more flexibility for layout and better rendering in IE7 please google!

[FN-GM]

What is your primary reason for using it?

 

Z

[markwilliamson2001]

Well it does a lot of the hard work for you when setting up a website for a Primary school, such as basic layout, school logo, term dates, news, easy to upload pics etc etc, setup file directories, site maps etc etc.

 

You can also include a google maps link, therefore providing maps which can be printed off, and also provide an excellent calendar system (google calendar) while also allowing the school to keep the site upto date without having to learn HTML, FTP etc etc. I have looked at Moodle, Joomla etc in the past, but this is very easy, quick and a synch to setup.

 

There is also an excellent "search site" function built in. It just covers a lot of bases that Primary schools could need for their own website without having to go really in-depth with designing a website from scratch (as I have done in the past). You also don't have to worry about backup and hosting issues etc etc!

[FN-GM]

Fair dos

 

I work in a high school and use Edugeek Joomla (soon to be moving away to a vanilla version) and have done all of what you said up there but with 3rd party utilities and Joomla add-ons.

 

The google pages does seem a good app but i would rather host my websites myself and not through google.

 

Good for a small website though!