5 Reasons I Am Done With Google Sites

Photo by Sybren Stüvel on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Our district uses Google Apps, so all of our teachers and students have access to Google Sites. For the last three years, as teachers have asked me, I've recommended that they use Google Sites to create their class or personal website. Initially, as they struggled, I figured it was just because there was a learning curve, and it would get easier. Besides, Google is always updating their apps, so the small difficulties we encountered would surely be remedied soon, right?

As time went on, and I tried various ways to teach Google Sites to teachers, and as they continued to struggle year after year, I came to realize that it's not the teachers' problem. Google Sites is a pain in the ass. It needs to be completely overhauled, yet the only "updates" Google has made in the last two years are completely minor tweaks to a ridiculously outdated interface. Google Sites was pretty cool in 2011. It is no longer 2011, and I am finished recommending it to teachers.

1) Why in the world is it so hard to edit a sidebar or horizontal navigation bar? Even teachers who use other websites and programs with ease find this rigamarole frustrating and difficult. Teachers who just want to add a new page for a new school year find it nearly impossible.

2) Why is it so hard to simply create a text link to an uploaded file? Most of my teachers just want to upload files for students and parents to download. They can post those files at the bottom of a page or in a file-cabinet page. But then creating text links to those files, like in a class calendar, or assignment post, requires them to right-click to copy a link and then pretend that their file is NOT in their Google Site, but is actually an external URL. This is the most common thing my teachers want to do, and yet it is ridiculously difficult. I made this video when I started as a ToSA, but even that doesn't help.

3) Why can't we sort in a file cabinet page? File cabinet pages are great if you have about one screen worth of files. Any more than that, and the page becomes pretty useless. You can create folders, but you can't set the order of folders. You can't sort files or folders. You can't search for filenames. And if you happen to add a file without a description, you have to know to click in a blank white space to add that description later. Seriously?

4) Want to format a table? Hope you know HTML or CSS or both, because you're not doing that outside of the HTML editor.

5) If I never see the "Some HTML tags are not supported and have been removed" message again, it will be too soon.

It's 2015. Google should either support Sites or abandon it. I've abandoned it. Teachers who want to create and maintain a simple class website should either use Blogger or Weebly. Neither of them is perfect, but they're still hundreds of times easier to use than Sites. I'd love to hear suggestions for other free, modern, easy website builders.