Friday, April 8, 2011

How to move your website under Google Sites from one account to another

This was a problem that I had been thinking of for some time now, because I have created a couple of websites to help out not-for-profit organisations here have their own web presence through Google Sites. I have made the websites under my own personal account. But then things can become complicated, as I realized that 1) these will take up my personal disk space allocation, and 2) it can become a problem sorting out Google Docs and Calendars.

And so I have decided to research on how to move the Sites from my account to theirs. I thought it was going to be a difficult task but it wasn't. This help page was the key:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/sites/thread?tid=4bea3530c271be42&hl=en

In the discussion, lawfuljustice mentioned that Google Sites is independent of your Google Account in response to wagas708's instructions. That is the key to moving the site. So after reading the discussion along with inputs from Steegle, I did the following:

(before all these, I have already created a Google Apps account for the organisation, with gmail working)
1. Logged in to Google Sites and performed:
More Actions >> Share this Site >> Under Invite People to Share this Site
2. I added the email address of the organisation and selected this as owner
3. I logged off, then logged in as that organisation at gmail
4. I saw the email I sent, then clicked the link that opens the website.
5. And that's it. I clicked Sites and the website is listed there.

So it was not so much as copying the files, but only transferring the ownership (or I can still be an owner of the site also if I want to!).

Update 4 hours later...
I discovered that for some reason, the website does not register under Sites for the new owner.  However, when he opens the email sent him and clicks on the link, it gives him access and shows up under Sites.

Something's wrong there.  But to complete the copying process (and not just the provision of rights), go to More Actions > Manage Site
Click General under Site Settings
At the bottom of the site is Site Actions
Choose Copy this Site
Assign the name and url for the website to be copied to.

Finally, delete the domain name references from the old site and update this new one.

I am not following through on these final steps, though, as I still want to be able to access the website from my own account.  So they'll just have to bookmark the link provided them from the mail.

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