Google Page Creator

Google Page Creator

File:Google Page Creator beta logo.png
Developer(s)	Google
Operating system	Any (web based application)
Type	Multimedia Internet publishing
Website	pages.google.com

Google Page Creator was a website creation and hosting service by Google. It was a tool for basic website design, requiring no HTML knowledge. During development, it was codenamed Trogdor, a reference to the popular Homestar Runner website. As of August 2008, Googlepages had over 3 million users according to Google's own index.

In September 2008, Google announced that it would not accept new sign-ups to Page Creator, instead encouraging users to use Google Sites. The service had been shut down in 2009, while existing published pages migrated to Google Sites.

Features

The features of Google Page Creator included:

• 100 Megabytes of file and page storage, with a 10MB limit on file uploads, maximum of 500 files per site
• 41 web templates, which could be applied to individual pages
• 4 page layouts
• Limited HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript editing
• Ability to upload independently created HTML files, which greatly mitigated the limitations above, at least for pages other than the Home page
• Autosave - edits were automatically saved at regular intervals
• Unique subdomain for each user's site, such as http://username.googlepages.com
• Three unique subdomains could be registered per new user (changed from 4 to 3 subdomains in 2006)
• No advertisements placed by Google, but users could add their own advertisements

Storage space

Google Page Creator offered 100 megabytes of storage, more than sufficient space for a well-designed website. The bandwidth limit was unspecified.

Files that were hosted could be linked to from any other site. Storage in Page Creator could also be utilized to upload pages to any account, without using the Web interface to create the page.

Experimental features

Google had added many "experimental features" to Page Creator since its release, including the ability to add widgets, crop images, and resize images to any size (other than the original four preset sizes). Originally these features had to be activated by users, but they came automatically with every site until its shutdown.

Suggestions for Improvement

Spammers could harvest gmail addresses by editing "username.googlepages.com" to "username@gmail.com". Perhaps to address this vulnerability to spammers, Google allowed the user to "Create another site", which would be a new address within the googlepages.com domain. To avoid spammers, one could create a new site and hide the default site, which contains one's gmail username.^{[citation needed]}

Lacking the ability to link to external CSS means in-page CSS had to be utilized, and such style code could not change the basic structure of the templates. Some critics had claimed that the templates and limited customization would lead to similar problems (such as large numbers of sites with uninteresting, 'identikit' designs) as were experienced by the GeoCities service in the late 1990s. An earlier criticism that Google's own Adsense program and similar services were not available in the Page Creator and required a hack to work. It had been addressed by the ability to include JavaScript in Page Creator.^{[citation needed]}

Google launched a product called Google Sites in February 2008 and had stopped accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator. Google's About Google Page Creator page states that: "If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year."

Google Sites has fewer templates than Page Creator. Another disadvantage is that Google Sites does not allow importing an independently created HTML file. Google has also not explained whether the transition to Google Sites will include transition of any presence in the Google index of Googlepages sites.^{[citation needed]}