My Google Sites enhancements wishlist

Bah! This is my biggest bugbear. I've built websites for paying customers and the whole "create a site, share it, take a copy, remove access" is a royal pain in the botanicals. 

Admittedly this is driven by a commercial desire but if there was a simple way to export just a theme, or whole template to share with others - well, that'd be double-awesome.

Adding a more flexible / comprehensive blog or Content Management System (CMS) capability to Google Sites would - I think - attract a fair chiunk of Squarespace's and Wordpress's user base to Google Sites. However the additional functionality is a) likely to add cost to using the product, and b) taking away from the simplicity of it all.

Structured data allows you to embed additional data on your web page to give Google more information on what the page is about. Once Google understands your page data more clearly, it can be presented more attractively and in new ways in Google Search. Good for SEO!

I haven't found a way to add structured data to a page yet (embed doesn't work) and I think you could do this in the Classic sites, but being able to add structured data would be a huge boon for SEO.

On many websites now you often see a popup box as your mouse moves out of the viewport, as you load the website or even after clicking a box. Considered by some to be poor UX, but I think this might add something to Google Sites and it's flexibility.

This would be a game changer for me. The simple controls built into the creator page are very good - but in order to get that really unique result I'd like to see a CSS editing facility to apply global CSS changes to a whole Google Site.

• Adjustable line height, to create 'bigger' buttons

• Custom spacing

• CSS box-shadows

Okay, I know site-wide CSS is not a 2 hour job to add to Google Sites, but what about being able to add box-shadows to images via the control panel? If you could add an extra set of parameters per colour style, and trigger/enable them in the image option panel (where you add caption or Alt text), that'd be excellent.

Box shadows are a great way to add effects to web pages - examples below. You can read more about box-shadows CSS here.

Being able to alter the colour and hue of the social links to suit the theme of your site would be a really nice touch. Low priority, but nice...

I love the content blocks in Google Sites that allow you to create columns and boxes of content like service descriptions, project pointers or product descriptions. It'd be pretty cool though if the image you used in the (for example) three column content block could be narrower/smaller than the text column.

So, if the text element of the three column content block is four columns wide, having a small image that was (for example) two columns wide just gives you that additional element of control for presentation.

It's a small thing, but very useful I think.

Adding text over an image in the content blocks would be a game changer. Such a simple thing, but highly effective and adds a whole new dimension to blogs, product pages and feature boxes. I'd love this.

Don't understand why you can't upload SVG images. Fairly standard stuff now and you get a better quality output across different screen sizes when the vector image scales.

Being able to edit the opacity of an image in Google Sites just gives it an extra element of sophistication, I think. Also adds to the braanding flexibility. I'd love this!

What it says on the tin - I'd love the ability to place a mask or set an option (natively in the control panel) to make an image round.

Like the avatar images in this WordPress theme.

Google fonts is amazing - I love how you can select from a mahoosive range of fonts in your site to give it your personal touch. And it's really easy too! If I were to be picky though, the thing missing for me is the ability to modify the actual text spacing in headers, titles and normal text (all text elements) to make it ultra readable. By this I mean spacing between the letters, and more flexibility in line height.

The Social Links feature in Google Sites means you can easily add social media links to your Google Sites. Simply add the web address and the icon is automatically added for you. Nice one Google!

WhatsApp is a widely used social messaging tool. You can add links to your Google Site so users can plop straight into WhatsApp to send you messages; think of it as a cheap/ready made live chat feature for your website. (Read here how to create a click to call link for WhatsApp).

However, there's no default icon/logo for WhatsApp!! Thankfully there's an add image feature if you want to add links to other (custom) social media profiles, and I know I can upload a WhatsApp one if really necessary, but come on, why isn't there a default WhatsApp logo in the Social links feature? (See footer of this website for example). Currently it's just default link icon.

Being able to add a Google maps marker to the Social links bar, whilst not a real social link, would be awesome. Being able to see directions in one or two clicks would be a great user experience.

Same as above but for the tel: link.

Google Sites now supports hyperlinks that use the tel: construct - useful to create click-to-call links, but no default logo/icon in the Social links feature? This would be a nice option.

I'm convinced I couldn't do this not that long ago.

Being able to use tel: in a hyperlink to provide click to call capability was fairly standard fare for a website. It seems you can do it now (apart from in the Social links feature).

Argh this one bugs me!

When adding a button to an element (e.g., under a header title) and the button width is automatically set to the element immediately above or below it gggnnnnnnnn. If you can reset the width of the button to suit your preferred style (e.g., it doesn't automatically go full width), well, I'd love that.

Properly spacing out elements is quite limited in Google Sites, but the new Density setting and the Spacer element go a long way to improving the level of control around spacing.