# Old Google Sites and New Google Sites - looking for another CMS



## Bloke (Feb 23, 2018)

Greetings Brethren.

I use Google Sites for my businesses and also for masonic purposes. I have 5 sites I own and personally keep active and administer.

Firstly, if you're a G-Mail or other Google product user, you can export your data via a tool which it can be hard to discover. You can assess it at https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout (back to that later). My tech guy told me about it. I found this particularity useful for downloading my whole site.

Google is moving its website CMS platform (Google Sites), now called "Old Sites" to a new one, you guessed it "New Sites". I've had a bit of trouble getting good info on it. It is still in  a state of flux, there is no migration tool yet, and there is no date for roll outs but Google says once a date is announced, they will leave Old Sites going for a year.

I've been looking at this, because last year, our lodge web site's visits fell from 3K a month to about 1.2K per month. Old Sites is mobile responsive and generally mobile friendly, but there is an recurring issues with the Robots.txt (which you can no longer edit and is set automatically by Google).

Google is expected to release a migration tool from Old to New Sites, but several of my web sites are important to my income, so I am considering my position. One of my great hobbies is our lodge web site. It's about 12 years old and has a lot of articles on it. Google is saying use cut and paste to move each page from Old to New sites, that's actually practical for my businesses, but for the Lodge web site - it's weeks of work prior to a migration tool being established.

From other threads, there are people using google sites for lodges. Back in the day, the hosting was free for NFP so it's been a great option, all I need to pay for there is the domain. I had a look at some other CMSs but they're all compatively expensive.

What are you using for your lodge web site and how much does it cost?

Are there any other Google Sites users here, what do you make of the current state of play with the CMS ?


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## dmurawsky (Aug 27, 2018)

I'm currently sorting all this out for my lodge. 
I'm considering JAMstack or static site systems, as well as the classic WordPress setup.
Bluehost, 1&1, and dreamhost are providers I've used in the past and had good luck with, but the static generated site means I can host directly on s3 or any cdnwith no database.
Lots of options. What are your goals?


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## Bloke (Aug 28, 2018)

Ease of use, the ability to have 500+ pages, cheap and good Google visability 

Since writing, I migrated one site to New Sites. It's okay but not great for a complicated site map with many levels.

Sent from my SM-G920I using My Freemasonry mobile app


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## dmurawsky (Aug 28, 2018)

That's a lot of pages for a lodge! Thankfully any modern CMS should be able to support that. Your site map with many levels, though, *might* be tricky. Often, sites with that many levels can be hard to navigate, though. I find that thinking about it in terms of searchable/indexable taxonomies is the way most places are going. Tags and categories being two simple examples. 
Google site visibility is more a function of SEO. 

It sounds like WordPress on a hosting provider like bluehost or dreamhost might be a great way to go for you. I'd definitely poke at it. There's a ton of info around the web.


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## Bro. David F. Hill (Aug 28, 2018)

I use Web Hosting Hub for all of my WordPress sites. I get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage plus their customer service is great. I put pay for my main website and the 10 others are free as they are considering addon sites. You should be able to migrate Google Sites to WordPress using plugins. 

Sent from my SM-G955U using My Freemasonry mobile app


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## dmurawsky (Aug 29, 2018)

Bro. David F. Hill said:


> I use Web Hosting Hub for all of my WordPress sites. I get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage plus their customer service is great. I put pay for my main website and the 10 others are free as they are considering addon sites. You should be able to migrate Google Sites to WordPress using plugins.



I'll have to take a look at that hosting provider. Bluehost is similar in that one paid site means you can host multiple others, but I've found the performance to be not so great if you do that. How is it on Web Hosting Hub?


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## Bro. David F. Hill (Aug 29, 2018)

I have not had many issues and the ones I had were because of my tinkering. I had some plugins that caused problems which lead to me being locked out and they worked with me to resolve them. I had originally planned to use Bluehost but I liked what I received from Web Hosting Hub better. I have also used them to set up numerous subdomains that I can use for development and testing. 

Sent from my SM-G955U using My Freemasonry mobile app
BTW, I currently have 11 sites in production. All running smoothly.


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