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Move a Google Site to Google Apps

There are a several good reasons to use Google Apps for Google Sites and to move a personal Google Site (often referred to by Google as a 'Consumer' Site) to Google Apps
  • You can create a bigger Site
    Consumer sites are limited to 100mb. The aggregate size of any Sites created in a Google Apps domain is 10GB. So if you only have one site, that one site can be up to 10GB in size.

  • You can create as many sites per week as you like
    Using a personal Google account, there is a creation limit of 5 sites / week. An that includes sites that may be subsequently deleted. i.e. it's the number of creations that count, not the number of Sites

  • Google Apps Sites are not prone to disablement due to false positive violations of Terms of Service relating to the Site
The downsides are:
  • You have to own a domain name
  • There are a few more administrative tasks involved in managing a Google Apps domain (most of which can be ignored most of the time - but see Google Apps Sites Settings)
Google Apps is free if you have fewer than 10 accounts as part of the domain.

For these reasons, I recommend creating Google Sites as part of a Google Apps domain especially if you have already bought or are planning to buy a domain.

As of 06Dec2012, Google Apps Free version is no longer available.

I still recommend business users to use Google Apps - the cost for a single user is small compared to the benefits. You can still add consumer accounts as owner/editor/viewer to any Google Apps Site.

Set up your Google Apps for your domain

Select the appropriate option from here. (If you don't already own a domain name, you can buy one as part of the Google Apps sign-up process).

Invite your Google Apps account as owner

Go to your personal Google Site, click Share then add the Google Apps Account e-mail address to the Add people box, choose Is Owner from the drop-down box and click share and save. 

Sign in to the personal Google Site with your Google Apps Account

Once you have invited the Google Apps Account sign out of your personal Google Account and sign in to your personal Google Site using your Google Apps account.  To do this when you get to the sign in page use the Sign in with a Google Apps Account text link, under the Email and Password boxes.

Copy your Site

Click More>Manage Site and go to General. Click the Copy Site button and complete the form (Site Name, URL and whether you want to keep revisions and sharing) and then click the Copy button.  This then copies the site in its entirety to a new site in your Google Apps domain.

Set Mapped Web Address (if required)

If you mapped a web address to your site, e.g. www.example.co.uk, then you need to remove the web address mapping from your old, personal site and add it to your new Google Apps Site. 

  1. Go to your personal Google Site. Click More>Manage Site>Web Address.  Use the Remove link next to your mapped web address, e.g. www.example.co.uk.

  2. Go to your Google Apps Google Site. Make sure you are signed in with a domain admin account. Click More>Manage Site and go to the General section.  Click the Map this site button under Web Address Mapping and enter the web address you want your site mapped to e.g. if you want your site mapped to www.example.co.uk. then enter www.  Then use the Add Mapping button to make the web address mapping point to your Google Apps Google Site

Make copied Site public

If your original site was publicly accessible then you need to make the new Google Apps site public.  To do so follow Steegle's instructions to Make Site Public and Searchable


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