We recently made it easier to share embedded spreadsheets in Sites. Previously your spreadsheet had to be published to the world (or at least the domain) to be embedded, which gave less control over who could see and edit the document. Being able to control collaborators and viewers in Google spreadsheets can be very handy, so it was important for us to allow these settings to work in embedded spreadsheets on Google Sites.



Posted by Scott Johnston, Sr. Product Manager

Now everyone can use Google Sites on their own domains, using their own URLs. In July we added this popular request for custom domains for sites created in Google Apps, and today we extended the ability to change site URLs for for all users of Google Sites.

To ensure that only proper domain owners can make this change, you must be the owner or administrator of the domain and have access to change the domain CNAME records. More details on how to set this up are in our help center.

Posted by Di Wang, software engineer

We have had some questions in our discussion group about why some outgoing links are sent through an extra redirect before getting to their destination URL, and we wanted to explain the benefits of this feature for private sites.

Normally if you have a link on your website to another website, and someone clicks on that link, the URL of your page with that link is passed to that site as referral information (and visible to administrators of that site). For example, let's say the Google Sites help page (http://sites.google.com/support/) has a link to http://www.example.com/foo. When a user clicks on that link, the owners of www.example.com will be able to see that the user came from http://sites.google.com/support/. This is great information for site owners, and works well for public sites.

While this isn't a problem for public sites, it can be an issue for private intranets. Let's say instead of our help site, the link to example.com was from your private intranet, http://sites.google.com/site/intranet/super-secret-project-name. You probably wouldn't want that link visible to the administrators of example.com, so for Google Sites that are set as private, we automatically perform what is called "referrer scrubbing" by sending outbound links through an anonymous redirector. The result is that anonymous information, not the URL of your intranet, is passed as referral information. We assume your private site is private for a reason and this includes your URLs as well as your content.

Just one of the many features in Google Sites which allow you to focus on your content, not your infrastructure.

Posted by: Scott Johnston, Sr. Product Manager

We know our users like to be able to customize their websites and wikis to their own style, and with our recent release we have added more flexibility and control over the layout of Google Sites. Now you can change the width of your sidebar and header (previously the height of the header was defined by the logo) or turn off the sidebar and header entirely. You now have control over the width of your site, which previously was always 100% of the browser width. You can also set the width of text boxes if you do not want your content to fill the whole space of the page by default.



Also in the latest release is tighter integration with Google Docs and Webmaster Tools. When you want to embed one of your Google Docs documents, spreadsheets or presentations, you can now conveniently select it from a list rather than pasting the URL into the document. With Google Webmaster tools, it is easier to see how Google indexes your content and if you enable the integration, you can also auto-generate a sitemap to submit to Google. (Learn more.)



There are several other small improvements in Google Sites that you may notice. Site editors can preview their site as it would look to a regular viewer. To do so just select, "More actions -> Preview as viewer." In addition, if you don't want viewers to have visibility into site activity, simply remove the element from the sidebar and the link will also be removed from the footer.

Posted by Adam Howell, Software engineer

The most popular request we have had since our launch has been the ability to change site URLs, and we are excited to announce our first set of features in this area. Now Google Apps domain administrators can map public sites hosted on Google Sites to their own domains. Sites can be mapped individually to a specific URL, like http://www.example.com, and as a group under a specific URL, like http://sites.example.com/[name of site].

Map a site to a specific URL

The standard URL of a site in Google Apps currently looks like http://sites.google.com/a/example.com/site-name, but now you can let users access your site at a URL on your domain that is easier to remember. The new location can be your domain home page or any sub-domain in your domain (e.g. http://www.example.com, http://info.example.com, http://wiki.example.com, etc.), and can be set up on the “Web Addresses” tab of the Sites service settings in your Google Apps control panel.

Change the root URL for all sites

If you have several sites, you can also make them automatically accessible at a designated URL on your domain. For example, instead of being at http://sites.google.com/a/example.com/site-name, the administrator can make them available at http://sites.example.com/site-name or at any other sub-domain.

Remember these new features are currently only available for public sites in Google Apps (mapped URLs to private sites will redirect to the standard URL). Stay tuned for more exciting domain mapping news for private sites and sites created under http://sites.google.com/site.

For more details on this topic and specific setup instructions, see our online help center.

While writing this post I learned about RFC 2606, which designates example.com as a domain that can be used for, well, examples. Doesn't that make a lot of sense? I sure thought so.

Posted by Di Wang, Software Engineer

In our most recent release we have added several new improvements to Google Sites. We pay attention to our Sites discussion group and try to prioritize ideas that make the most sense or that people are most passionate about. To that end, here is a rundown of some of the most recently added features.

Auto-save in edit mode

Ever been dealt the crushing blow of losing unsaved work? Like when your computer crashes 5 seconds before you were going to hit submit on your masterful rant about, let's say, the most recent addition to the Indiana Jones series? You can now breathe easier when authoring pages in Google Sites, because we've got your back. Once you start editing a page, Google Sites will automatically save your edits after a few seconds and a message that your draft has been saved will be displayed on the far right hand side of the editor.














Page names & URLs

It used to be that you had one shot to choose the URL of any newly created page, which was automatically generated based on the page name entered. So if your page name was "The Magnificent Seven", the end of your URL would look something like "/the-magnificent-seven". Now you can change the page URL at any time by going to the "More Actions menu -> Page Settings", and changing the "Page URL" field at the bottom. So say you want a more abbreviated version, and you change it to "mag7". Once you click "Save", the page refreshes with the new URL, and you're done. The beauty of this is that any inbound links from other pages to the original page will automatically be updated to the new "mag7" page name and will not break.



















Support for links in List pages

A popular question from our users was "How do I create a link in my list?". And so the "URL" column type was born. Using the same Link picker that is used in the page editor, you can now enter URLs to external websites or existing pages within your site. In the example, I used the Link picker (by clicking the "or, select existing page" link) to select the existing Magnificent Seven page from earlier.














Creating new pages in the Link picker dialog

Say you want to add links to other pages without first having to create the pages - basically, you want to start from the top down instead of bottom up. In traditional wiki parlance, this is called forward linking, and there's usually a special syntax that you need to use. Google Sites has taken a different approach than the typical wiki mechanisms -- we've integrated the flows of linking to pages and creating pages into a single process. As you're editing a page, start by clicking the "Link" button to launch the link picker dialog. Then, look for the "Create new page" button at the bottom. When you click it, you can create a new page on the spot, without leaving the current page. Type in a name for the new page, hit "Create page", and you'll be sent right back to the original link picker dialog with the new page selected for you. Just hit "OK" and you're done -- in one fell swoop you've created a new page and linked to it without ever leaving the warm comforts of the Link dialog.



























Custom site landing page configuration

In Google Sites it used to be that every time you logged in to your site, you would be automatically sent to your "Home" page at /Home. In the interest of giving site owners more control over their site, we now allow site owners to configure which page is shown as the landing page. Head on over to "Site Settings" -> "Other Stuff" to check it out.






Posted by Reuben Antman, Software Engineer

Wouldn’t it be great to know how many people visit your site, what content is most popular, and if searches are getting people to the right places? Google Analytics is a free online service with stats, graphs, and reports that answer these questions and a number of other things you might like to know about how people use your site. Analytics offers sophisticated analytical tools that are simple and secure to use, and appeals to a wide range of users.

Up until recently, Google Analytics wasn’t integrated with Google Sites, but now it is easy to get started (no coding required) with three steps:

1. If you don’t have Google Analytics already, sign up for a free account
2. Login to Google Analytics and find your tracking ID
3. Login to Google sites to enable Google Analytics and enter your tracking ID in your Google Sites settings

If you have any questions, check out our help center article on configuring Google Sites to use Google Analytics

You only have to set this up once to apply to all the existing and future pages in your Google Sites website. It works if your site is public or private. If you would also like to track search results on your site (good for knowing what people are looking for and whether they are finding it), this feature can also be enabled.

Once you are set up, all you need to do is login to Google Analytics to check reports and see how people are using your site. Here are some of the cool things you can do.

Posted by Jeanie Komarek, Software Engineer