Google Sites

[julesjones]

I set up a website some years ago for my fanzine activity on Google Page Creator, and temporarily stopped updating it when they announced that they were moving everyone to the shiny new toy called Sites. And waited for my site to be moved. And waited. And waited...

And eventually stopped bothering to check if my site had been moved, partly because by then I was burnt out on zines and it was too much effort. By the time I noticed that my site had at long last been moved, and mangled in the process, I didn't have any spare effort left for even the paying writing. But today I logged in with the intention of Doing Something about unmangling and then uploading at least one zine and/or some stories.

Ewww.

Some of this is just working with a new interface, but really, eewwwww. I suspect I'd have a less horrified reaction to the interface were I starting a brand new site, but trying to de-mangle my existing site that got moved over is driving me up the wall. I'd consider just starting a new site and copying the text over to that, but that would be work, and you know, given the G+ nym wars, I'm not sure I want to put that much effort into something that might vanish like the mist in the morning sun. It might be simpler to go and learn how to build a website on WordPress.

I still haven't worked out whether, let alone how, I can upload the pdfs of the zines. That was what I planned to do as a quick and dirty way of getting some of them online, because I do not fancy the amount of work involved in properly webifying them, and many modern e-readers can cope perfectly well with pdfs.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Wordpress is very easy if you just use one of their templates. You could copy and paste the text of your old pages and it's really easy to set up a professional looking menu system. You can either use the free Wordpress site or for a few pounds, have your own domain. There is free web hosting available.

With regard to the PDF's, the quick and easy way is to FTP them to the web space and create an index in which the links go to the PDF file. When someone clicks on the linke, that should just open the document in the browser.

[julesjones]

Thanks -- I've used Wordpress for the book blog, but only as a blog with a couple of extra pages, so I had no feel for what it's like as a website hosting system rather than a blog.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I do the occasional bit of updating and page-creating on a site using WordPress, so it can't be terribly difficult.

[threeoutside.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you're having such headaches. I have nothing to offer, but your post prompts a question: I'm not using google+ or whatever it's called, but I've seen in others' blogs something about "G+ nym" and am baffled. Is there an easy way (for you) to define "G+ nym"? to this know-nothing?

[julesjones]

Google in its wisdom has decided that people *must* use their real name in public on Google+, no exceptions, violators will have their profiles suspended without warning. Their definition of real name is deeply problematic, and that's before you get anywhere near the privacy/safety/privilege issues of demanding that people use their "real name". One of the nasty effects of this is that people have lost access to not only their G+ data, but things like their GMail linked to that account, and even found their Android phones having problems.

The zine site in question is under the pseudonym I used to publish the original print zines. If this "real names compulsory" policy spreads to other parts of Google, even in the more limited form of "you must have it on your public profile somewhere", that account is dead in the water.

[threeoutside.livejournal.com]

Well, if that doesn't suck.

[sheenaghpugh]

Google really pissed me off when they changed googlepages, which I was fine with, to sites, which I could not get the hang of at all. Its great feature was apparently that lots of different people could eidt a site, which I didn't want at all.

I went over to webs.com with my RL site, and it's fine, but at the time they let you have 20 pages on a free site. It's down to 10 now, though existing sites are unaffected. I don't think the paid-for version actually costs much, but don't really need it.

[julesjones]

Oh good, I'm glad it's not just me.

Thanks for the pointer to webs.com -- I probably need more than 10 pages to upload the zines properly, but it's worth bearing in mind as an alternative.