Our school want to start using new google sites for each class as class blogs. Is there a way that parents can subscribe to updates on these sites and get an email notification when the site is updated?
The new Google Sites is a big improvement on its predecessor and many schools could be tempted to move their website there. My own school has moved its parents’ newsletter to a Google Site. It’s a great tool for integrating some of Google’s Suite of products such as embedding documents, slideshows, etc. However, it is still fairly limited in its capabilities in terms of what you can do.
Unfortunately, this means that it is tricky to give parents the ability to subscribe to updates on the site without a good bit of hackery and witchcraft! There is no function to set up RSS feeds on the new Google Sites so that option is out and Google have not provided any gadgets or extensions for Sites yet either.
The only thing I can think of directly within Google Sites is to create some sort of subscription form on the site which collects the email addresses of those that fill it out and every time there’s an update to the site, you can email the list to tell them. This isn’t exactly ideal as it isn’t an automated process.
Another hacky way of doing things is to create a blog in something like Blogger and embed it in Google Sites. Again, this isn’t ideal and, in a way, doesn’t make much sense, but might be handy for keeping everything together. If you are embedding a blog, you can use that particular blog’s RSS feed to update parents when there’s any new content.
Last Update: March 28, 2018