Google To Take On Geocities Google Page Creator

[dontmaimyourself 0]

Well I just found out about a new webhosting service offered by Goolge, the highly imaginatively titled Google Page Creator, its your basic (ie not very good) free webhosting services, with the massive advantage of its name being preceded by the all powerful Google. I havent extensively used the service but I will atempt a brief overview of the service.

The basic service consists of the usual what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG), which is allows novice users to create pages with no knowlegde of HTML (I'm sure you all know ho wthey work). It comes in the usual template form, which I must say is very easy to use, of caurse it won't live up to commercial WYSOWYG editors, and the best way to create good webpages is still to learn HTML (which naturally you can edit with Google Page Creator). It does however offer some actually quite good (well not terrible) templates. the pages will be hosted at username.googlepages.com (I'm assuming most of you have a Google Account). I'n not really sure if there are any advanced features yet (such as FTP access or MySQL).

While I haven't used this servcie extensively (I was just so excited at a new Google service I just hjad to share it), I have noticed a quite annoying problem, it didn't really like Firefox (well Deer Park 1.6a1, using Gecko 1.9a1, ain't sure about Firefox 1.5) all that much, I had to use IE, altough I did have alot of Java disabled. it kept telling me another user had ended my editing session, which is odd as IE didn't)

Anyway, while I doubt most of the people hosted with Xisto will be flocking to use this as their primary site, I thought you guys should know about this (and a forum search didn't show any posts about it) from what I can see however it does appear to be easier and better (although not as full featured) than both Yahoo's Geocites and Lycos' (that apostraphy is probaly in the wrong place, I never could work those ) Tripod.


Update 1: I found a browser based upload tool, currently not functioning for me.
Update 2: there is a 100MB usage limit. (which is respectable I suppose, not sure about Geocities and Tripod, please fell free to add their usage limits if you know them)
Update 3: there is an Auto-save feature.
Update 4: No adverts. (Altough I expect this to change, given that it's where all the money is)

Edit: link is pages.google.com

Edited February 23, 2006 by dontmaimyourself (see edit history)

[ebula 0]

Geocities give 20 MB & Tripod 15 MB limit. I have pages there, which are flooded with their ads. Looks weird if you suggest someone to see your webpage. Hope the new service from google will be better. One thing you forgot to mention is the link through which you can open googlepage account. I hope all will be intereseted to know.

[wariorpk 0]

I think that it is about time that Google offers this kind of service. I think it is good that there is finally some competition so these other companys can hopefully try to compete with Google and then competing to be the best will hopefully make each service better and better until they are all half way decent. Today I tried out this service and the templates look decent and the site builder was easy to use. 100 megabytes of space is nothing to complain about for a personal website that has no major files on it. As far as I could see there were no ads. One of the good things about it is that your pages actually would validate as well (I checked the sourcecode and there was a document type). If you do not like to code your own website or do not need any of the fancy features you get here that is the best way to go. It is far better than Geocities or Tripod.

Edited February 23, 2006 by wariorpk (see edit history)

[htdefiant 0]

Its much better then geocities. By like miles. I like the editor.

[inyourarms 0]

That's really good actually. I think it's a very good amount of space, but does anyone know if they have adverts? And what would your URL be? The autosave's good, I know it's useful for when you're writing emails on Gmail lol. Yay for Google!!

[Dragonfly 0]

This is pretty interesting. I'm sure it will be closely similar to something like blogger.com which gives username.blogspot.com as the url. The good thing about google is that those ads in the blogs are owned by the bloggers, and still they are making money using those. I'm sure that even pages will bear the same results and also further popularizing and continuing their dominance on the web. In fact, freeserver pages and geocities are nothing but garbages these days. The only problem for now is that googlepages is still in beta version. And everyone cannot get the pages yet. I hope it will be available soon.

[boyCradle 0]

We have been waiting for thins thing from Google for a long time already. And our dream is finally starting to come true. I tried to register but they are currently not ope for new sign-ups. I guess there are so much demands on the service. I hope the pages will not have those advertisements like yahoo geocities's. I expect it to have ads but not as annoying as gecocities'. I hope they would also iclude us on they pay-per-click business, we will get paid just by using this service from Google.

[bladeron 0]

yes, i have been waiting for this too and here we go...i m sure that the servcie will improve with time but i surely hope that they dont ruin it with ads or pop ups or side banners like geocities and many other web hosting servicesthe features seem pretty decent as of now but they do need to add php and my sql support ..........however, with the current features theres a heavy demand for thier srvices that they've stopped accepting new accounts for some time

[catfish 0]

i doubt they will add php/mysql soon. (php maybe...) i don't think they are aiming for the web designer crowd. rather they are trying to come out w/ a new and better myspace type of deal, where your average joe bob who doesn't know the first thing about html can have his own decent website. Sadly it doesn't appear to be a tool for experianced people, rather an outlet for the masses. On the other hand hopefully it will have a chain affect like gmail, forcing everyone else in the market to up the antee on bandwidth, features, etc.

[Saint_Michael 3]

if google where smart and most of them are they should pull off a Xisto like website loaded with everything you can possibly imaging with a copule hundred mbs worth of space and maybe a gig or 2 of bw. but if its going to be a blog thing then its not worth typing in the url but do keep us posted though.

[mayank 2]

Well saint,

I've got a diff. point of view over here..Google is actually eyeing on a group of people, who dont know much about technical stuff and still want to maintain a website! And if I am correct majority of people actually dont know much about website designing or even softwares like wordpress or similar!

And I think they have captured a good section due to this!

And one more thing..We must not forget that Google Pages is still in the BETA phase..and who knows that in future they may incorporate those things!

[ebula 0]

Guys, I just created my page on google. So much neat and tidy it looks. You have to login with an existing gmail ID, create your page in one of the most simplest WYSIWYG page wizards. No ads on your site, google pages is still in beta.

To, start with your link is here

http://pages.google.com/

This also gives you 100 MB for your files for free. So far I dont see a detete file link on their site. So what you upload, is permanent ;-) The good point is that, there is no bandwidth quota as it is hosted by mighty Google. ;-)

Once you finish adding texts to your page, you can hyperlink your uploaded files to them. No chances of broken or missing links. Because you can see a preview of links in real time. Once you finish your home the address looks like this:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
You can create as many pages as you can and link them to your homepage. Although google says the scheme is still in beta, and they only provide you facility to create single pages instead of a full website, Its still ideal for hosting your resume, hobbies, blogs, etc. Also, by linking through your pages, you are eventually creating a full fledged website. You may add pictures, banners, flash to your pages by linking and resizing images uploaded in your 100 Mb space. Just feel it yourself. Interestingly, you can create a sitemap and add it to google. You may use coffeecup's google site mapper software, if you dont know how?

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Now about the long ugly sitename that you receive, can be replaced by redirection. I used co.nr service, which just ask you to put a small bullet in your first page. The redirection from other services like dyndns, opens an ugly popup. Also co.nr names are smaller than Dyndns or likes. (Example your.co.nr, P.S. three letter name is a paid service). Get your free domain name here:

http://http://www.freedomain.pro/

They are so flexible i their approach, that they dont ask you to put banners or ads of theirs, instead a small bullet 60x40pi which reads as 'web hosting reviews'. I added html code from co.nr at the page footer, so its not much visible.

What more do you want? Most of the free web hosting services place their ads on your page. Now, you all may like to feel the difference at google.
Edited February 24, 2006 by ebula (see edit history)

[iwuvcookies 0]

Google Page Creator has experienced extremely strong demand, and, as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. We will notify you as soon as we are ready to add new accounts. Thank you for your patience

i was dissappointed i couldn't try out their lustrious new project in the beta version. Then when visit the site and that's what i got. Darn. I wished i was one of the first to know about it so there woudn't be a demand for it.

[brainet 0]

Google have launched Google Page Creator, a free website creation tool.
Perhaps best described as Geocities for the 21st century, Page Creator takes the Google AJAX magic and applies it to website design. The process is simple, albeit, at this time, a little buggy.
...
...
...
No longer. Google Pages sees the company delve into a natural but new field, and will no doubt be popular.

Notice from BuffaloHELP:

Warning issued! Copied from http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[michaelper22 0]

Sounds pretty good. I like what Google does with AJAX on their services (especially Gmail), so surely it would make a decent site management tool. Where can we find this tool? Need a link.