A lightning talk, introducing Google Sites, things you can do with it, and how I played with their Lists (to create the Malaysian politicians that use social media list).

1. 27/06/2009
Sites
or a poor man’s database
(ok, really, MS Access)
Colin Charles
byte@bytebot.net
http://bytebot.net/blog/
Saturday, 27 June 2009

2. Hosted sites
• Geocities?
• Tripod?
• AngelFire?
• Google Sites
Saturday, 27 June 2009

3. Benefits
• Can put it on your (sub)domain
• site.bytebot.net
• Can have it as part of Google Apps for Your
Domain
• You get a whole lot more space (100MB/
site vs 10GB/domain)
Saturday, 27 June 2009

4. An embarrassment
from 1996
from web.archive.org
Saturday, 27 June 2009

5. Not much has changed
in 2009
Saturday, 27 June 2009

6. Why do I bother?
• I blog a lot more these days, rather than
update static HTML pages
• vim foo.html; rsync -e ssh -vzra foo.html
bytebot.net:~/public_html/
• Pages on the other hand are great for
“resource building”
Saturday, 27 June 2009

7. So, what’s Google Sites?
• Multimedia, calendars, presentations, text,
all in one place
• Easy to use editor (like office software)
• Control permissions for viewing/editing
• Gadgets
• I want to play with this more
Saturday, 27 June 2009

8. But what really rocks?
• Templates!
Saturday, 27 June 2009

9. OK, its not just that
• Analytics integration
• AdSense integration
Saturday, 27 June 2009

10. Lists
Saturday, 27 June 2009

11. Lists
• Type:
• Checkbox,
Date,
Dropdown,
Text, URL
Saturday, 27 June 2009

12. Voila! Poor man’s MS
Access
Saturday, 27 June 2009

13. Embedding gadgets
Literally a pull-down menu away
Saturday, 27 June 2009

14. Problems?
• AdSense, you can’t track based on a
channel
• Option to tag, in terms of type (making for
easier organisation)
• Imagine a field where it was freeform
“text”, but comma separation garnered
them as tags
Saturday, 27 June 2009

15. Your experiences?
Thanks!
Colin Charles
byte@bytebot.net
http://bytebot.net/blog/
Saturday, 27 June 2009