Exploration of Google Sites

Continuing our discovery of new SaaS offerings, I built a web prescience for my fictional infomediary, KnitWeek.

Please go check it out:
https://sites.google.com/site/knitweek/

I found that creating the Google site was fairly easy.  I did get a little confused on 'themes' versus 'layouts' versus 'templates'.  I also couldn't find where to change your template again once you get started, but that was okay in my experience.  I choose a blank template to begin with so that I could start with a clean slate.  Google Sites definitely has a lot of expandability; you can make your site as simple or as complicated as needed for your purposes.  There was not a great "Getting Started" section though other than the initial walk through of setting the appropriate site-wide settings such as title, layout, etc.

The actual design aspect wasn't exactly user friendly to begin with, but once I got started, the learning curve was fairly short.  I really enjoyed the readily available widgets and tie-ins to the other Google products such as Calendar and Forms.  However, I was displeased with the inventory of the widgets and the fact that most appeared to be user generated.  It was very hard to find the exact RSS feed reader I would like using the search, and I had to try out many before I found the right one that actually worked as documented.  The navigation was set up well though to move back and forth trying out new widgets.  It was also disappointing that there was not a "Create New" option when tying in with the other Google offerings.  It seems like a pretty easy option to implement that they choose not to.

Google Sites definitely fits in with our definition of the Software As A Service model.  It is on-demand access to webhosting, web design, and collaboration suite integration.  Also all the information posted and developed is stored centrally with Google in the cloud, making it accessible anywhere from the Internet.  Google's collaboration suite relates to the Service-Oriented Architecture concept in that it is composed of individual components that can be taken separately or in conjunction with each other in a multitude of combinations.  It also follows that each of these components is able to be accessed remotely as well.  Google's suite of resources is scalable, reusable, autonomous, and granular.