Updated roadmap for classic and new Google Sites

We have updated our plans for Google Sites and want to let you know two key things:

1. We’re going to build more enterprise-focused features into new Sites (including ones from classic Sites): We listened to extensive feedback from customers and have identified a number of features in classic Sites that are particularly valuable to larger organizations. We plan to add comparable functionality for those features, along with new and unique features, to new Sites. We believe these will help you use new Sites in different and exciting ways, while making the transition process to new Sites easier and more streamlined. See below for more details on specific features.
2. The final date to transition from classic Sites to new Sites will be the end of 2021: Also based on customer feedback, we realize that classic Sites still offers unique value to our enterprise customers today. While we add more of the requested features to new Sites, we will continue to invest in maintaining core classic Sites functionality until end of year 2021.

More features coming to new Sites 

Here are some examples of commonly requested functionality that you will see in new Sites in the future:

Create richer, more customized sites: 

• New site themes so your sites can match your company look, feel, and brand.
• Improved text controls to provide you with a greater choice of fonts, colors, styles, and more.
• Standard templates from Google to help you quickly create common types of sites (such as team sites, project sites, and events sites).
• Custom templates to provide simple access to starter websites specific to your domain.
• Better integration with other G Suite products so you can easily embed content in Sites.
• New API capabilities, including Apps Script support, so you can automate and manage sites.
• New page elements, like tables of contents and image carousels.

Create and manage larger sites: 

• Additional functionality and controls to help you create and manage larger sites.
• Increased size limits so you can build larger sites.
• Ability to see what’s changed between the previous published version and current draft of a site, so you can make more informed publishing decisions.
• Version history so you can see and restore previous versions.
• Richer and more comprehensive search from within a site.
• Google Vault support for content from new Sites.

Transitioning from classic Sites to new Sites 

In 2016 we announced a new version of Google Sites, and in 2017 we announced that new Sites would eventually become the only version of Google Sites. We’ve heard feedback that classic Sites remains valuable for our customers. While we work to add some of the features detailed above, we plan to maintain core classic Sites functionality. This will extend the deadline to transition from classic to new Sites, which we detailed in this post, to the end of 2021.

We continue to have dedicated engineers maintaining core functionality, but classic Sites was originally built many years ago and its infrastructure and integrations with other products and gadgets are quickly becoming outdated. As a result, we cannot guarantee all features will continue to work as they currently do.

As we make progress along the roadmap and expand the features and functionality of new Sites, we plan to improve our migration tools and processes to help make the migration from classic Sites to new Sites easier.

We’ll provide more updates as work progresses. Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog for details of these announcements.

Try new Sites today  

The new Google Sites has a simple interface that makes it easy for anyone to create functional and attractive sites. Many of our customers already prefer it to create common types of sites, including team sites, product sites, and event sites. If you want to try it:

• As an Admin, you can turn new Sites on for your organization.
• If it’s available for your organization, you can go to sites.google.com/newto create a site.
• If you own an eligible site in classic Sites can use the automatic site converter to migrate it to new Sites.

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