What are “Google Sites” and how can we use them without dilluting the internet?

The first time a client showed me this new Google application back in 2008, I was a little worried.  Integrated with Calendar, Docs, Sitemaps, Paypal… on the surface the examples of “sites” look media rich and fully integrated with Google technologies… not to mention free. The real concern? will the internet be replaced with 2 click generic websites?

A few questions / concerns:

How customizable is the GS deployment if we are publishing all of our content and web applications exclusively through Google accounts?

Style and branding flexibility is limited to the “Google” themes provided in the GS administration. These themes are very functional and can be customized with a logo in the top left hand corner. Point in case…. not very flexible, this is NOT a solution for an organization looking to fully integrate their branding and use the “Google site” as their primary marketing tool. However, their are so many amazing applications for enabling a client and their organization to create GS for internal dialogue and collaboration purposes.

Can this functionality be pulled into an external website? (example: can I have a timeline created by the milestone manager pulled into our commercial website)

Integrating an external website with GS is somewhat of a mute point. GS is a central location for the Google Apps, each individual app can be accessed from an external website using the specific API’s and documentation for that specific Google technology. For example: if you would want place a Google Calendar in a wordpress website, you would access the Google Calendar API and technology (no need to involve Google Sites)

If Client’s can create a basic website with a few clicks and point a custom domain to the GS, will this be the end of small open source deployments such as WordPress, or Drupal

After further investigation *sigh of relief* it became very clear that these are NOT competing commercial web applications, but rather a platform or portal for collaborating using the diversity of Google apps. Even though you can sign up for a corporate Google account and point a domain to the Google site. The sites Google offers are meant to be used for educational and organizational collaboration. “People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it’s just yourself, your team, or your whole organization,” explains Google.

Conclusion: Spend the next 2 weeks researching how to take advantage of this technology and seamlessly integrate mini-sites setup into a branded, professional web presence

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