Google Sites

Create custom themes

You can now create highly customized themes in Google Sites that align with your organisation’s colours and brand guidelines. In a theme, you can customise fonts and text style, colours, brand images, navigation settings and the style of components such as buttons.. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Restore a page from revision history

As well as restoring an entire site, you can now restore a specific page from your revision history in Google Sites, making it easier to restore pages that have been edited in error.

Find out more in our How To video:

Custom site templates

You can create custom templates in your organisation’s template gallery for sites, allowing anyone in the organisation to create new sites based on those templates. A template can create any number of pages, all including content such as text, formatting and linked elements such as Google Drive folders and Calendars. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Classic sites creation will no longer be possible from 15th May

Google are currently replacing Classic Sites with New Sites, with Classic Sites supported until the end of 2021. From May 15th, you will no longer be able to create new sites in Classic Sites.

Here is the timeline for the availability of Classic Google Sites:

• From 15th May 2021 you will no longer be able to create new Classic Sites

• From 1st December 2021 you will no longer be able to edit Classic Sites

• From 1st January 2022 visitors to classic sites will no longer be able to view site content

Google Sites Migration Guidance

Anchor image backgrounds

When you edit a section that includes a background image on a site page, you will now see an anchor icon which will allow you to choose how to position the image within the section, or to centre the image automatically. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Customise text in Google Sites

You can now adjust the format of text in text boxes in Google Sites, including setting the size, colour, font and spacing.

Find out more in our How To video:

Create sites based on pre-set templates

Google Sites can now be created using one of 10 templates, which will add pages and content to the new site automatically. You can then change the content to match your own requirements.  Templates include project sites, help centres and sites for small businesses. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Add an announcement banner to a site

You can now create an announcement banner on your site to communicate important messages to your visitors. Information will be displayed in a banner at the top of the home page, or all pages of the site, as required. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Change all site settings in one place

You can now change all of your settings for new Google Sites in a single dialog box, including navigation, logo and colours, search options and site analytics. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Review changes before publishing

Before you publish your Google Site, you can now compare the new version with the currently published version to make sure you wish to go ahead with the publish. You will be able to see the current live version and the new version side-by-side, with a list of all changes that have been made. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Image carousel, button and table of contents updates

There are a number of new updates to Google Sites to improve the look and feel of image carousels and buttons. You can also hide specific heading from a table of contents on a page. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Cloud Search

You can now add Cloud Search integration to a Google Site so that viewers can search throughout Google Workspace or just within your site. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Site Feedback

You can now allow your site viewers to send feedback or ask a question about your site from a standard Content Form that can be viewed from any page on your site.  The feedback will be sent to the site owner by email, but site viewers will not see the owner's email address directly. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Version History 

Google are rolling out version history in Google Sites - by March you will be able to view the version history of new Google Sites that you create and by the end of next year you will be able to view the history of existing Google Sites. 

You can now add collapsible headings to a new Google Site, that can be clicked to show more text. This is useful to hide additional text until the user wishes to view it, and can be used in a variety of pages, including FAQs. 

Find out more in our How To video:

You can add an icon to show on each page in your Google Site that visitors can click on to find out the date on which the last edit to that page was made. 

Find out more in our How To video:

You can now add a carousel of images to your site pages, choosing all of the images that will be displayed in turn in the carousel.

Find out more in our How To video:

You can now add a table of contents to a page that automatically includes all headings and subheadings on a page as links, and will update automatically as you edit the page.

Find out more in our How To video:

Last year, Google Sites added the ability to embed Google+ streams into new Google Sites e.g. a top-level community page, a community category page, a collection page or a Google+ profile. You can now embed a stream of posts from Google+ onto a page in new Google Sites, to match specific keywords or search operators. 

Find out more in our How To video:

You can use section layouts in Google Sites to set the position of text, images and other items on the page. There are 6 different layouts that can be used and once they have been added to a page, you can add content to each placeholder in the layout as required.

Watch our how-to video to find out more about using layouts in Google Sites:

You can now add buttons to a site page to quickly add a link to another page or website. When you add a button to a site, it will automatically match the theme of your site, and can be resized as required. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more about adding buttons to a page in Google Sites:

You can now embed Google+ streams into new Google Sites e.g. a top-level community page, a community category page, a collection page or a Google+ profile. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more about embedding Google+ streams in Google Sites:

You can now make a copy of a site that you wish to use as a starting point for a new site. This functionality can also be used to create a “template” site and make a copy each time you wish to use the template for a new site. 

In any site, click on the ellipses along the top of the site and choose the Duplicate command.

You’ll be prompted for a name for the new site, and where to save it. You can also set the sharing of the new site to be the same as the original. 

Google Workspace admins will now see a Site details link in the footer of a new Google Site - when they click on this they will be able to see the site owner’s email address, the date on which the site was last published, and an option to request edit access to the site. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more about viewing site details in the new Google Sites: 

If you are a Google Workspace administrator, look out for the following banner across the top of any classic Google Sites that you open. You can click on this banner to see what your site would look like in new Google Sites. 

After clicking on the banner, a wizard will convert the site for you, allowing you to review the draft when complete. 

Be aware that not all functionality in classic Google Sites will be converted. 

• Your site will be reset to the default theme of new Google Sites but you can change header images or theme colours once it was been converted.

• Font colours and font size changes will be ignored on any site pages.

• Embedded Drive folders, docs, forms, maps, calendars and groups will be copied correctly to the new Google site, but embedded charts will be lost. 

• Gadgets are not supported in new Google sites so will be replaced by a “broken embed” placeholder.

• Any lists in your classic Google site will be converted to Google Sheets and embedded into the new site.

• Announcement pages will be converted to a main page and subpages, with links between the two.

• Comments, subscriptions and revision history will be lost.

• As new Google sites can only have one owner, any other site owners will become editors.

• Page-level permissions will be lost.

We will keep you updated of new Google Sites functionality as it is introduced, so keep viewing this site to find out more. 

By default, any page you create in a new Google Site will be added to the navigation bar automatically. You can remove a page from the bar as required, but you can now also add custom links to the navigation pane, to link to other internal or external sites. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more about adding custom links to the navigation page in Google Sites:

The Favicon is the name given to the small icon you see on the left of a tab in Google Chrome. In new Google Sites, you can now change this icon for a site, to make your site stand out when multiple sites are open, and to help your viewers recognise your site more easily. 

Usually, to add a favicon to a website, you need to create a special type of file with the .ico extension. In Google Sites, however, you can choose any image file and Google will convert it to the correct format for you. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more about adding favicons in Google Sites:

In a new Google Site, you will also now see visual indicators when resizing images, allowing you to set multiple images in the same section to the same height.  

By default, the URL of a page within a Google Site will end with the name of the page, which can be relatively long if the page title is long.  If you had a page named Migrating from Outlook 2016 to Gmail, for example, the URL of that page would end /migrating-from-outlook-2016-to-gmail. 

You can shorten the URL of a page without changing the page name e.g. using the above example, the URL could be shortened to /outlook to make the page easier to find directly using the URL. 

To change the URL of a page: 

1. Click on the three dots to the right of a page name in the Pages pane of the site

2. Choose Properties

3. Click on Advanced

4. Set the Custom path of the page as required

5. Click on Done

If you are making changes to a Google Site that contains a large number of pages, you can filter the list of pages in the Pages pane to show only those that you need to change.

Click in the Filter Pages box at the top of the Pages pane to type any part of the name of the page you wish to edit. Only pages containing that text in their name will be displayed.

You can publish a site to a specific audience rather than to everyone in your organisation. This means that you can share a draft site with select users, then publish to a wider audience with your site is complete.

Watch our how-to video to find out more about publishing sites to a specific audience.

You can now embed JavaScript and HTML into a new Google Site, allowing you to embed widgets such as Twitter feeds and other useful information. 

Watch our How To video to find out more about adding HTML and JavaScript to a new Google Site:

New Google Sites continue to have new features and functionality added, this month with global footers. You can add a footer to all pages in the site, and can turn the footer off on specific pages if required.

Watch our How To video to find out more about footers in the new Google Sites:

Google are continuing to improve new Google Sites, to add functionality and reduce some of the limits imposed when new Sites were introduced. This month, the number of pages that can be nested in a section has increased from 2 to 5, allowing you to have nested menus in the navigation bar.

You can drag pages up and down in the Pages pane, to nest them under the required page:

New Google Sites continue to be improved, with 2 new features added in September. 

A Search bar is now added to all site pages automatically when a site is published, allowing you to search for content across the site. 

Additionally, you can now embed web pages in a new Google Site, allowing you to include content from other sites on a page. 

Find out more about embedding web pages in New Google Sites in our How To video:

New Google Sites are seeing improvements and new features on a monthly basis, and this month users could start to publish new Google Sites to a custom URL. As in classic Google Sites, the URL must first be mapped in the Admin Console, but once that has been done, a site can be published to a specific URL using the settings within the site.