Google Page Creator

Infobox Software
name = Google Page Creator

Google Page Creator Logo


caption =
developer = Google
latest_release_version =
latest_release_date =
operating_system = Any (web based application)
genre = Multimedia Internet publishing
Version = Beta
website = [http://pages.google.com pages.google.com]

Google Page Creator is a website creation and hosting service by Google. It is a useful tool for basic website design, requiring no HTML knowledge. During development, it was codenamed Trogdor, a reference to the popular Homestar Runner website. As of August 2008, Googlepages had over 3 million users according to Google's own index. Google is not accepting new sign-ups to Page Creator, instead encouraging users to use Google Sites.

Features

The features of Google Page Creator include:

* 100 Megabytes of file and page storage (Note: There is a 10MB limit on file uploads, and no more than 500 files can be uploaded at a time)
* 41 web templates, which can be applied to individual pages
* 4 page layouts
* Limited HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript editing
* Ability to upload independently created HTML files, which greatly mitigates the limitations above, at least for pages other than the Home page
* Autosave - edits are automatically saved at regular intervals
* Unique subdomain for each user's site, such as http://username.googlepages.com
* Three unique subdomains can be registered per new user (changed from 4 to 3 subdomains in 2006)
* No advertisements of any kind

torage space

Google Page Creator offers 100 megabytes of storage, more than sufficient space for a well-designed website. The bandwidth limit is unknown.

Files that are hosted can be linked to from any other site. Storage in Page Creator can also be utilized to upload pages to any account, without using the Web interface to create the page.

Experimental features

Google has added many "experimental features" to Page Creator since its release, including the ability to add widgets, crop images, and resize images to any size (other than the original four preset sizes). Originally these features had to be activated by users, but now they come automatically with every site.

Suggestions for Improvement

Spammers can harvest gmail addresses by editing "username.googlepages.com" to "[e-mail]". Perhaps to address this vulnerability to spammers, Google allows the user to "Create another site", which would be a new address within the googlepages.com domain. To avoid spammers, one can create a new site and hide the default site, which contains one's gmail username.

Lacking the ability to link to external CSS means in-page CSS has to be utilized, and such style code cannot change the basic structure of the templates. Some critics have claimed that the templates and limited customization will lead to similar problems (such as large numbers of sites with uninteresting, 'identikit' designs) as were experienced by the GeoCities service in the late 1990s.ref|ars An earlier criticism that Google's own Adsense program and similar services are not available in the Page Creator and needed a hack to work has been addressed by the ability to include JavaScript in Page Creator.

While the GUI makes good use of Ajax features, the HTML code rendered is deprecated.

Google launched a product called Google Sites in February 2008 and has now stopped accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator. Google's "About Google Page Creator" page states: "If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year." [ [http://pages.google.com/-/about.html http://pages.google.com/-/about.html] - accessed on 01 August 2008]

Google Sites has fewer templates than page creator. Another disadvantage is that Google Sites does not allow importing an independently created HTML file. Google has also not explained whether the transition to Google Sites will include transition of any presence in the Google index of Googlepages sites.

References