Update 2009.11.13 - Google Buy Now buttons on Google Sites For many months now following the on screen directions for the creation of "Buy Now" buttons on "Google Sites" did not work. When you tried to copy and paste the HTML code into your page the paste was not accepted by the HTML editor. I had devised a work around for this but suddenly my work around no longer worked. In desperation I retried following the on screen directions and apparently they have finally resolved the previous problem as the on screen directions now work. Update 2009.09.08 - About Text Problem - Google Sites Screen Capture  Here is text created with "Open Offiice" with the default "Format/Paragraph/Line Spacing/Fixed at the setting 0.3
I have recently been creating a lot of text for Web Pages and with the introduction of new Hi Res monitors I have wanted to use larger font sizes as the “Normal” 10pt font is just to small for display on a 1920x1080 monitor. Unfortunately as you increase the text size in the “Sites “ editor fonts are rendered in the editor with increased line spacing but when you select “Save” the line spacing is reduced so that the lines overlap. One of the great failings of Google is the there is no way to report a problem and you are left to your own devices to find a solution. In order to solve this problem I now compose my text in “Open Office” and copy and paste the text in my web pages. Here is text created with "Open Offiice" with the default "Format/Paragraph/Line Spacing/Fixed at the default 0.2
I have recently been creating a lot of text for Web Pages and with the introduction of new Hi Res monitors I have wanted to use larger font sizes as the “Normal” 10pt font is just to small for display on a 1920x1080 monitor. Unfortunately as you increase the text size in the “Sites “ editor fonts are rendered in the editor with increased line spacing but when you select “Save” the line spacing is reduced so that the lines overlap. One of the great failings of Google is the there is no way to report a problem and you are left to your own devices to find a solution. In order to solve this problem I now compose my text in “Open Office” and copy and paste the text in my web pages. As you can see "Open Office" give you control of font sizes as well as line spacing. About Google Sites I have had my web sites with "googlepages" for many years now and I have really liked this service. Now Google is no longer accepting new subscriptions to "googlepages" and that service is being replace with "googlesites". The editing interface has changed considerably and I wish they had not changed but time marches on and new and improved is the goal. It seems that new and improved is a one pound can of coffee containing 12 oz. Be that as it may for new sites I am creating for customers "googlesites" is the best option I know of to date which combines email contact, simple page editing, search engine visibility, credit card sales and free hosting. For the less knowledgeable user this method of web creation allows you construct a web page as easily as using a word processor without any knowledge of HTML, or text editors. About building Web Sites Originally building of web sites was a complex process that involved creating a text document called a .html. This was a difficult process which required knowledge of the .html language and use of a text editor. Through the years there have been many improvements to this process and there are now many programs which write the .html files. These programs work but due to the various requirements of the place where the sites are hosted there usually is required considerable adjustment of the .html to get it to display as one would like.
In 1999 Microsoft introduced web hosting on their server which had integrated editing capabilities that created the html code. That process being invisible to the user. Since the editing capability was tuned specifically to their site the compatibility problems between the html editor and the host configuration was eliminated. This allowed users to edit their site much as they would a word document and insert pictures, pages, URL links and much more without any knowledge of the underlying html editing process. I had sites hosted on this program called “Open Office” for some time but the development was very slow and it remained in “Beta” development for some time and had a lot of bugs.
When Google introduced their web hosting in 2002 I switched immediately from “Open Office” to “Google Pages” as I found their editor much easier to use than Microsoft's. Google also had integrated their various processes so that email, web pages, search engines, site activity reporting, and monetary transactions were all interrelated because they were all under the same roof so to speak.
My sites were all under “googlepages” but googlepages is no longer accepting new account and all new accounts are under “googlesites” for which I have now set up numerous sites this site being an example
Setting Up A “GoogleSites” The central meeting point for all your “GoogleSites” activities is your google email address <name>@gmail.com. This is where you will receive all communications about your site or from your contact page on the site. Also you must be signed in to your Gmail address with your password in order to edit the pages in your site. One of the big advantages of a site hosted with Google is you get much greater visibility on search engines. There are programs that Google runs constantly called “Crawlers” that examine sites for words that will be recognized by search engines. They “Crawl” their own sites most frequently giving you better visibility with "googlesites" on the Internet.
So step one in creating a “GoogleSite” is to set up a Gmail address. After this is completed and tested to verify all is well a site can be created, home page format selected, and a home page created. Most of my customers find they can edit their own sites after this preliminary process is completed.
Inserting Picture Files I
prefer to prepare my pictures prior to posting I know many people
just take their high resolution camera images and then use the
picture editing capabilities of googlesites to resize them to the
page. This however loads the site with a lot of excess data and
does not provide the quality in resizing that a good dedicated
resizing program provides. It must also be remembered that
people operate their machines in many resolutions. I know
people using laptops that are still running 800x600. I also
know people with high resolution LCD screens that run in 1920x1080.
For this reason web page design that appears good on your screen
might not view well on other peoples machines. Web pages
reformat text according to the window size the pictures however
always display the same size on the page regardless of window size.
For these reasons I always re size my images prior to posting.
I know that a picture resized to a maximum of 800 pixels and encoded to
.jpg file format and displayed "full size" will be viewable
by almost all machines. I have
prepared a dedicated piece of software for creating low res images
for web posting and email transmission called MHconvert.exe which
allows the user to batch process images to JPG format. About: MHcomvert
Creating Download Files
One
of the most important things I do with my web sites is I offer
software downloads like the link in the blue text above. This
was very easy with googlepages but now trying to do the same thing
with googlesites I found very frustrating. I must thank
Philippe Chappuis for explaining to me how to do it. Since the
process is not very intuitive I am documenting it here. You
start by selecting create new page and when the new page dialog box
appears select "File Cabinet". This is where the
download files will be stored. In the "Name:" box
give the File cabinet an appropriate name something like "Downloads"
and click on the button "Create Page". Now you
can "edit" your sidebar and include the "File Cabinet"
- "Downloads" in your navigation window. After you
have done this you will be able to select your "Download" -
"File Cabinet" and click on the button "Add File"
this will allow you navigate your drives and select the file you want
to upload. Before clicking the "Upload" button I
suggest that you do a breif description of the file in the "File
Description". That being completed select "Upload".
When the link appears in the list you can right click on the link and
select "Copy Link Location" go to the page where you want
the link to appear select "Edit Page" and place the
cursor where you want the link to appear. Select the "Link"
button at the top of the page select "Web Address" and
paste the URL you copied and click "OK". This
sure ain't too intuitive. Site usage reporting – “Analytics” Google sites has good reporting of site traffic with a tool called Analytics. For someone using this tool for the first time the instructions are very confusing involving copying and pasting of Java Script into the HTML code of each site page. It took me a long time of attempting to follow these instructions until I found out that Google sites works differently and the instructions I was following were neither possible or necessary.
Here is instructions specific to Google Sites first open: Then select “+ Add new profile" Select “Add profile for new domain” Insert the URL for the new domain You will be sent to a page with instructions for the “Tracking Code” Ignore everything on this page and click “Finish” You will be sent to the page where your sites are listed Next to the URL you will see a number starting with UA Copy this number as you will need it later
Okay now go to the site Sign in so that the “Edit Page” option appears Next to “Edit Page” click on “More Actions” Select “Manage Site” Select “Sight Settings” and “General” Go down the page to “Statistics” Check “Enable Google Analytics” Insert the number copied earlier in the box Click the Box “Save Changes” Wait 24-48 hours for the site to become registered. Doing Sales with credit cards – “Google Checkout” Another nice feature of "Google Sites is the ability to do sales with credit cards. This is done by setting up a merchant account. This account allows you to place "Buy Now" buttons on your web pages which will accept credit card payments and deposit the funds into you bank account. If anyone is interested in this feature I can set it up for you or perhaps in time I will get around to creating a text document explaining the process. To see an example of this select other "Electric Farm" sites "Software Downloads" in the side bar at the left.
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