Google use Google-Sites, so we should too!

This QuickTip explains why I now feel happier about using elements from Google Sites in my blogs.

What is Google Sites, and why would a Blogger use it

Long ago (back in the late 2000's) there was a product called Google Pages, which people could use to make their own simple websites. It wasn't the greatest product that Google ever made (or purchased), and eventually it was retired, with websites made with Pages transferred over to the newer Google Sites.

Sites always seemed a bit clunky. It doesn't seem to have a huge number of users.   And there are vastly better products for building more-complex websites, and for building simple ones (eg using Blogger to make a "real" website).

Now, I did use a Sites filing cabinet as the document-store for one of my sites that makes lyrics of certain public domain songs available in PowerPoint format. I chose it before Google Drive had been released, and when Docs was not nearly as good as it is now. And SEO does matter for this blog, so I came to appreciate that the link to a file in sites includes the file-name.

But I've always had a nagging sense that one day Sites would be retired too, and I'd have to move my files and edit all my posts to re-set the links.

Why won't Google retire Google Sites

Despite my previous misgivings, I'm now feeling a lot more relaxed about Google Sites.  

Why?   Well I don't have a crystal ball.   But this recent post from the Google Testing blog talks about how they are into "dogfooding" and that Sites is one of the tools they do this with, to " host team pages, engineering docs and more"

Just to explain, "dogfooding" is corporate-jargon for using your own products. As in "eating your own dogfood".  It's sometimes called "drinking your own chapmpagne" in companies that see themselves as a bit more refined, or "eating your own cooking".

Google's post is telling us that they are using Sites for building tools that they use in their own work. Most likely, they have a website built in Sites, which manages their plans for future Blogger development, and available only to people inside the company and working on the Blogger project.

So that makes me feel reassured that most likely:

1. Sites won't be canned any time soon, or
2. If Sites is turned off, Google will have a replacement tool which will provide the same (and better) features, and they will convert items now built in Sites to this better tool.

Phew!

Maybe it's time to review my file-hosting approach again, or to re-visit Sites and look at their FAQs, home-page and support-community, to see what other Sites tools I might find useful.

How have you used Sites in conjunction with your blog?

---

Related Articles:

File-hosting options: places to store files that you share from your blog

Why SEO doesn't matter for lots of bloggers

How to replace a file in Google Drive with a new version

This article is about how to update a file that you have loaded to Google drive. It only applies to files that have not been converted to Google Docs format - for example, PDF, Word, Excel etc files.

New versions vs new files in Google Docs

On a couple of my blogs, I provide files that people can download and use themselves.

When you share a file in this way, there are three main issues to consider:

• Where to put the file
• How people will find it
• What format to use.

Today, Google Drive is the most obvious file hosting option for people using Blogger. (A file host is somewhere that you can put files which Blogger cannot upload - see File Hosting options for Blogger for more details and other alternatives.)

I thought a lot about the best format to use for these files: if I convert them to Google Drive (AKA Docs) format, they won't count against my file-storage quota, and everyone has access to Google Drive/Docs.  But not everyone has a Google account, or access to Docs at the time when they want to work on the file. And some people might struggle with using Word tables and formatting. So in the end, I decided to stick with MS Word and PDF formatted versions, for now at least.

Click here to open the PDF version.

And I tell people about these files by writing a blog post (eg "Table Quiz Answer Sheets") introducing the template, and put a link to each files in it (eg like the picture on the right for the PDF version - for info about how I did this see "Putting text and pictures side by side" ).

However I know that some people choose to note / bookmark / share / etc the location of the file, rather than the blog post. This is fine by me: the point of my blog is to provide tools, templates and advice. I ENsure that there is branding and a link to my blog on the downloaded files, so everyone who sees the printed version knows about my blog.   But I'm not fussed if some repeat-business goes directly to the files - I think they'll come back back to my site when they need advice or a different template.

But what happens if I want to change the file, for example to fix a typo that was missed originally, or to add a new feature?

If I just upload a new Word or PDF file to Google Docs then the links to this file will be different - even if it has the same name as a previously uploaded file.   People who go directly to the original file file will get the old (wrong) version - or even worse, I'll delete it and they will have a broken link.

However I've found that if I use Google Drive's tools for loading a new version of the file, then people with the link will always go directly to the latest version - and I can choose whether to keep the older versions inside Drive, or to delete them.

How to load a new version of a file to Google Drive

Log in to Google Drive, using the Google account that owns the document.


Navigate to the folder that the file is in.


Tick the document that you want to replace or update


Select More, from the navigation options bar above the list of documents


Go to Manage Revisions

Upload your updated version, using the Upload New Revision link:

If you want, delete the older non-current one using the "x" checkmark to the right hand side of the screen.

Job done:  anyone who goes to the existing file link will now get your most-recently-uploaded version of the document.

Troubleshooting

If there is no "Manage Revisions" option, then most probably the file is in native Google Docs format rather than another like Microsoft Word or PDF.   In this case, you need to edit it on-line.  Unfortunately I haven't found a way to temporarily leave the old, unedited, version available to any one who looks at the file before you have finished opening it.   This could be particularly annoying if you want to make a lot of changes -  in this case, it may be best to convert the file back to a downloadable format (Word, etc) and work on it locally before re-uploading and then copy-and-pasting te new contents back to your original file.

Can this be done with the Drive desktop software?

The short answer is: I don't know.

 I have multiple Google accounts, for different blogs, so I've decided that it's safest to always use the web-browser based tools to manage files in Drive, rather than try to work with different accounts on different areas of my local file store.

If you do know, please leave a comment below.

Other options?

I'm certain that there are othr tools in which it's easier to replace an existing verison of a file with a new one without changing the link to the file.    The following notes discuss the ones I've tried so far.

Google Sites

Originally I used "filing cabinet" pages in Google Sites to store the files which I make available. This has a couple of advantages:

If you upload a new file with the same name, then

• The link does not change
• The sharable link includes the original file-name, which makes it easier for me to be sure that I'm putting the right link into my blog posts.

However, Sites isn't Google's preferred way of managing documents now and I have a nasty feeling that one day it may go the same way as Google Pages, Reader, Picnik, etc.  So I decided a while ago to stop using Sites for this.

---

Related Articles:

File Hosting - places to store files that you use in your blog

Understandiing Google Accounts

Showing things side-by-side in Blogger

Google Drive will eventually replace Docs - but not yet for most of us.

If you use Google Docs as a file-hosting option, then the recent announcement of Google Drive probably has you wondering how Docs will be affected: there's a marketing announcement on the Docs Blog, but it has a distinct lack of detail on how it will work.

But this announcement on the to Google Apps blog has more info.  Key points:

• Initial access is "on an opt-in basis via invite at drive.google.com/start"
• It's being released to Google Apps users first: It will be made available to all domains over the next 4-8 weeks.
• But [eventually] Google Drive will become the default andwill replace the documents list as the way to access files and documents.

It is introducing many changes and new features to Google Docs, including:

1. A Google Drive desktop application, available from the Chrome Web Store
2. A mobile application for your iPhone or iPad
3. Sync files between all of your devices with Google Drive for your Mac/PC
4. A different kind of search tool across your own files
5. In Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation editors, you can add a file to a folder by clicking the folder icon
6. Collections are called folders
7. More options on the Settings menu
8. More views on the left navigation: "My Drive", "Shared with me", "Activity"
9. My Drive (instead of home) to organize all of your files, folders and Google Docs.

Note that you will not see any of these changes until Drive is available to you.   In the meantime, Docs continues to work as it has been working.

If you are a domain administrator, notice that Google Docs has been renamed to "Drive and Docs" in the Google Apps control panel, and that there are new settings in this service.

Showing a PowerPoint presentation in your blog as an embedded slideshow

You can show content from a PowerPoint presentation inside your blog, by converting it to a Google Docs document and then using the "embed" code that Docs provide.

Overview:

This article shows you how to put a PowerPoint file into Google Docs, and then use the "Publish" feature from Docs to show the presentation right inside your blog - in slideshow mode.

For many presentations, this is currently my favourite way of displaying them, because it gives a very nice-looking display.   Here's an example of a presentation displayed like this:




Follow these steps to embed a presentation in your blog:

1  Upload the PowerPoint file to Google Docs, making sure that the "Convert documents, presentations, and spreadsheets to the corresponding Google Docs formats"... option is ticked.

2  Once it's uploaded, choose Return to Google Docs

3  Open the presentation (by clicking on it)

4  Click on the Share button in the top RIGHT corner of the Presentation Editor, and choose Publish / Embed.  
(Note:  for this option, you must be inside the Presentation Editor. You know you are in the correct place if the Share button is on the far right of the screen.   If it's on the left, then you are possibly going to share the document, but this won't get you the embedding code).

5  Click the Publish Document button.

6  Choose your options.   These include:

• a player size (I like Medium for presentations that are going inside posts), 
• how fast to advance slides, 
• whether to start the presentation as soon as the player loads (I don't like this - readers may want time to take in the rest of the article first)
• what to do when the last slide is reached.

7  Copy the HTML that is provided.

8  Return to Blogger, and paste in the HTML code, in any of the ways that 3rd party HTML can be added.


What your visitors see:

People who read your blog directly through a web-browser see the first slide of the presentation, with controls (play, back, forward) in the bottom left corner.   When they click the Play icon, the slideshow plays, and at the end it shows a summary slide and gives the code that your reader can use to embed the same slideshow themselves.

I'm still investigating what people who see your blog in a feed reader (eg Google Reader) or via an email subscription see:  it's possible that the embedded slideshow won't actually display in these tools.

Are you reading this in a feed-reader (other than Google Reader)?  
I'd be very grateful if you could leave a comment about how the slideshow looks for you.

---

Related Articles: 




Adding HTML from other places to your blog

Putting a slideshow from Picasa into your blog.

File sharing hosts: places to store files

Sometimes, you may want to make a file available for download, or even just for reading, from your website or blog.  This article lists some options for this, and some of the issues involved.

1. What is "file hosting"
2. Google's file-hosting options (Docs, Sites, Picasa, Maps, Video)
3. Some non-Google file-hosts (Your ISP, Scribd, Flickr et al, YouTube)
4. Related Articles 

What is "file hosting"

Blogger lets you include the contents of video and picture files (.bmp, .jpg, .png files) in your posts.    But if you want to display any other type of file, or make a file available for your readers to download, then

1. You need to store the file somewhere else, and
2. The place that you store it in needs to make it available, on request, to people who ask for it (usually by clicking on a link in their web-browser), and
3. You need to put an appropriate link to it into your blog.

A place that lets you upload a file, and then makes the file available is called a file-host.

Generally, when you upload a file to a file-host you need to set the security level, so that the host knows who is allowed to see (read) and change (edit) it.

Google's file-hosting options

Google Docs
Docs is Google's main file hosting tool.   You can now upload files of any type.   This includes text, xml, sql, and compressed (zip) files.

For some types (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc) you have the option of leaving the file in it's "native" format, or converting it to Docs format.

After you have uploaded a file to Docs, you can set the Sharing options for it.   If sharing is set to either public or "anyone with the link", then you are given a link that you can use to share the file.

The link looks like:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5681944372768269659&postID=2851854464091107939

and of course you can use it as the link for some anchor-text, like this in the same way that you create any other link.   (The words "like this" are linked to the same place as the long link that is shown above.)

When someone clicks on the link, they are taken to a Google Docs file viewer screen showing either:

• A view of the document, with options to save, print or download it (if the file type is one that Docs supports), OR
• A link to download the document (if it's not a file-type that Docs recognises)

If a document is in Google Docs format, you can edit it and the Share button (top right corner) has an option for Publishing it to the web.  Doing this creates a separate webpage, with its own URL, that anyone with the link can use to see the document.

Published documents give the option of a link, which looks like:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1p_QFNXNfXE56XwWuSgg3iU8rDt_a29lvTwqxN_wsSUU

or an embed code, like:
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1p_QFNXNfXE56XwWuSgg3iU8rDt_a29lvTwqxN_wsSUU&embedded=true%22%3E%3C/iframe>

If you put the embed code into the HTML behind your post, you get something that looks like this:


(The document being displayed here is simply a word-processing file containing some text.)

Google Sites
Sites is another Google-based alternative for file-hosting.  

When you log in to it, you are prompted to either create a new (web)site, or to select an existing one.   If you do this, and create a new "filing cabinet" type of page, you have a place where you can upload files - of any type.

When you look at this filing-cabinet page, you see some action buttons (add a file, move it to a folder, delete it, subscribe to changes), and a list of files that have already been uploaded.   Each file that is listed shows the file name, and links to View (only for files of some types), and Download it.

A view link looks like:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiaGF0ZmlsZXN0b3JlfGd4OjEzMjMxNDYyMDBjYWNiMzg

and a Download link looks like:
https://sites.google.com/site/bhatfilestore/template-management/Feedflare-sampleeBook.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

You can copy the value beind these links from the Sites page in whatever way your browser supports (in IE8, it's right-click > Copy Shortcut)

A Sites file cabinet is a better file-storage option than Google Docs for some cases because:

• You can easily get a download link which doesn't force readers see the file in a Google Viewer and require them to find and click a second link to put a copy of the file I'm offering onto their computer, and
• The download link includes the name that the file has on your computer (or wherever else it was made):  this makes it a lot easier to double-check that you've attached the correct link to the right anchor-text.
• If load a new file with the same name to Sites, then it simply replaces the existing file with the new one, notes that there is a new version - and the links don't change.

If you want to display the content of a file from Sites inside your blog, it may be possible to do so using a Google Web Element.   (This definitely works for PowerPoint files - still to check about others.)


Google Project Hosting
This is a tool for hosting code for open-source development projects. I haven't tried it yet (or checked the terms and conditions of use), but it may be a handy place for storing text files that can be read without having to go through Docs/Sites display screens.


Google Maps
Really, a map is just a (very specialised) type of file.  I've previously described how to put a Google custom map into your blog.

Picasa-web-albums
Picasa-web-albums (PWA) is a specialist file-hosting tool for pictures, and has many features that are not available in Docs, Sites, etc.   Since 2006, pictures that are put into Blogger posts are actually stored in an album in PWA.

I tend to upload pictures here first and then just link to their URL from Blogger, because this lets me control the resolution of the uploaded files.

Google Video
Video is where movies that are uploaded to your blog using the Video icon in the post-editor toolbar are stored. 

A major disadvantage is that it does not let you find or manage (delete, edit) videos that you have uploaded.   For this reason alone, I'd use YouTube, or Vimeo, or almost anything else if I wanted to put videos into a blog.  [NB  I haven't tried either .. yet.]

Non-Google file-hosting options

Your ISP
Some ISPs include file-hosting as part of their services.  You need to investigate how you can access and display files that they host for you - and whether you may be charged for traffic is a lot of people start downloading your files.

Scribd

This is one of a number of file-hosting services on the internet, and has been recommended by many Blogger users.

For PDF files, it provides codes that you can use to embed the pdf content in a Post, rather than forcing your readers to download it.

It's free, but has a restriction on how much an individual can download each day, so isn't good if you want only a few people to be getting large documents from your site).

DocStor
Another free-hosting site that has received good reports from many bloggers in the past.

Other Photo Sites:
Each site has slightly different features:  you may find that  flickr, Photobucket, Imagehosting, or FanBox suit your needs better than Picasa-web-albums, if you're want a "full featured" photo sharing system.

Or if you need very quickly accessible features, try something like:

• Dropbox, 
• CloudApp (for Mac) / FluffyApp (for Windows)
• ImageShack - now called YFrog
• Imgur
• Min.us

(Thanks to LifeHacker for the list of recommendation).

YouTube
"The" site for hosting videos.   

---

Related Articles: 



Putting a Google custom map into your blog

Finding the URL for an image in Picasa-web-albums

Loading a Word document to your blog, via Google Docs

Showing a PowerPoint presentation in your blog, as a slideshow

Tools for applying copyright protection to your blog

Giving your subscribers a free file (eg an eBook) using Feedburner

Writing posts for Blogger using Microsoft Word or Works

This article is about how you can write the content of your blog posts when you are not connected to the internet, and actually post them later when you are connected again.

Why write off-line

Some people like to prepare their posts while they are off-line:  This may be because their internet connection costs are very high, eg they are on a cruise ship as a passenger or as crew, or because their internet connection is unreliable. Some people just find that they can be more creative when they're not connected and being interrupted by chat and emails. Others may have documents that they wrote before they knew that Blogger (or even the internet) existed, that they now want to put onto a blog.

If you copy-and-paste from MS Word (and other Microsoft programs too, eg Excel, PowerPoint), then a lot of extra codes are added to your text.  These characters can have all sorts of bad effects, eg I've seen a help-forum post about a page element in the sidebar changing colour unexpectedly which was finally tracked down to a copy-and-paste from Word, and another about a Feedburner feed stopping working because it was too large partly thanks to Microsoft's HTML codes.

So, to be safe, the advice is DON'T copy and paste from Microsoft directly to your blog.

Which leaves people asking, how can I:

• Write the contents of  blog posts when I'm not connected to the internet?
• Convert existing word-processor documents into to Blogger posts?
• Load content from another tool into your blog?

Options for writing blog-posts offline

Use a text editor

The simplest approach is to write your document contents in a text-editor (eg Notepad) without any formatting.   You can copy-and-paste from there into Blogger when you are ready, and then you apply formatting after the text is put in the blogger editor.

Double copy-and-paste

Another approach is to write in MS Word or another word-processor.  When you're ready to post, copy the text into a text-editor (eg Notepad) first, and then copy it again from there before you past it into the blogger editor.   You will lose any formatting (bold, italics, indents etc) that you did in Word:  they will need to be re-done once your post is in the Blogger editor.

Write externally and link to the file

You may decide not to load the document contents into Blogger at all.  Instead, load it to a file host (see File-hosting options), and link to it from your blog post with some anchor text.  

Anchor-text is the set of words that are used to link to something - for example, in the last sentence, "file-host options" is the anchor text, and "http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/01/file-sharing-hosts.html" is the link

If you do this you want to be sure that the people who will looking at the file will have software that can read it.   One good option can by to save it as a PDF file - if you use some file hosts, you can even get the HTML to display the PDF embedded in your blog (using option two from Putting external HTML into your blog).

Use a Blog-friendly editor

One tool that you can use for off-line work is Windows Live Writer.  I haven't tried it myself (yet), but this article about it is from a person who generally gives very good advice.   That said, if you're going to use WLW, you need to keep using it, because there are some issues with switching back to the regular Blogger editor later on.

Another possible tool is MS Word version 10.   This has an option to publish blog posts.   It may not work in all situation - eg in some companies, the network may be set up so that you cannot make the necessary connection between Word and Blogger.  Also, I'm fairly sure that it will use the Live-Writer approach, so it's likely that posts originally written in Word 10 (and higher) may not be easily edited in Blogger.

Use a conversion program

This involves using a piece of software that takes a Word (etc) document and turns it into the type of HTML that Blogger can handle.   Google Docs is one option - there's a separate article about this approach, because it's so new and has so many potential options and challenges.  But so far, the feedback is that this works well.

---

Related Articles

File-hosting options.

Using Windows Live Writer (external link).

Converting Word documents to Blogger via Google Docs

Showing a PowerPoint presentation in your blog

Putting external HTML into your blog