Publish

Congratulations, you're almost done! In order to publish your site so that your class can see it there are just a few more steps.

Make Your Site Shareable

Just as we did with documents, you'll need to lift the restrictions on your site so that anyone who has the link can view it. Here's how you do that:

Go to your Home page and click the Share with Others icon at the top of the screen:

You'll see a box like this:

At the bottom of that window it says: Links

Links vary Change

Click the Change button

The box will change to look like this:

Click the little triangles next to Draft and Published Site

From those drop down menus, make sure the Draft is restricted, so that only you and people you designate can work on your web site.

Make the published site Public, so that anyone can find and open.

Double check that your Published site is Public and not Restricted. If it's restricted your class won't see it.

Publishing Your Site

When you are ready to publish your site, click on the blue PUBLISH button on the top right of the screen. You'll see the Publish to the web screen:

You will then see the screen above allowing you to type in the web address for your website. Pick a few words to describe your course and type them in the box (e.g. short-class-name). Google may have already suggested a name; if you like it you can stay with that or change to whatever you like. You can't have spaces in the name; Google will replace spaces with a dash. The web address show above is: https://sites.google.com/view/short-class-name

Keeping your Site Private

While you may be proud of your site, you may not want to share it with the world, especially if it has your contact information, your Zoom link or the names of any class members. The best way to keep your site private is to hide it from Google or other search engines. That way, the only people who will be able to find your site are those people that know your exact custom URL.

As long as your site is Sharable (see first box above), when you click the down arrow to the right of the Publish button, you can select Publish Settings ...

On the page that pops up there should be a section in the middle titled Search Settings. Check the box that says Request public search engines not to display my site. This will keep your site private so that the only people who will see your site will be your class and any other people with whom you share your link.

Now click SAVE at the bottom right.

Share the Site URL

To share your web site address with the class or others, go to your Home page and then click the Copy Published Site Link Icon at the top of the page:

Click Copy Link; the link will be copied to the clipboard and you can paste it into an email and send it. This way you you and your class don't need to type that long address.

To test if you've got the right link, open a new tab in your browser and paste the link into it, to make sure it looks right

What Happens After You Publish Your Website?

Once you publish your website, you now have two “versions”, a Published one and an Editing Canvas (or draft).

The published version is the one that everyone will have access to once you share the website URL with them. It will remain unchanged until you Publish again.

The editing site is simply for you to resume creating/maintaining. The website will continue to save itself every few seconds while you are working, but the only way that your public users will see the updates is when you hit the PUBLISH button again.

Meaning: You can work on editing your website for days or weeks without hitting the publish button again and everything will be saved. But until you hit the publish button again, your class won't see any of your changes.

After publishing, you will see a down-arrow, to the right of the blue PUBLISH button, with four options. (These options may be useful when you re-publish or if you decide to unpublish your site.)

Publish Settings – This menu option brings you back to your publishing settings where you can check the privacy of your website.
Review Changes and Publish - This option takes you to a page that will show changes made and then allow you to publish.
View Published Site – This is the menu option that takes you to your currently published public website.
Unpublish – This menu option will unpublish your website and “remove it from the web.” The site remains in your Google Drive for you edit if you like. You can publish it again when you are ready.

From Teacher Cast Educational Network, “How to Correctly Publish your New Google Sites Website,” Jeffrey Bradbury, 7/9/2019

Don’t Forget: Once you have made a change(s) to the website, REPUBLISH!!

Google Sites

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