This site is for testing only (... this is an announcement banner that can be switched on or off)

Info- read this first

Important - please read

No changes have been made to the live CRA website (http://www.chorleywoodresidents.co.uk/)
This test site is published using the .UK domain not .CO.UK It is publicly accessible, but only via https://newsitetesting.chorleywoodresidents.uk so should not be found. When looking for this test site, make sure you don't accidentally use .CO.UK as you will not see it
At this stage the test site is not meant to represent the style or content of the new CRA website. Rather it is to trial the features that New Google Sites offers, and see how we can use them for the new CRA site.
Things are going to change and some things won't work right
There is a navigation menu along the top which can be used to get to the various test pages that I have created. Each page has a Page Information - click to expand item at the top (just for now while we are testing). Click this and it will expand with some info about the page. This is called a Collapsible Text item. There is also a bar across the top of every page which is an Announcement ... I've used this to remind that this is for testing only
We still need to find out whether we can use New Google Sites to make a public website with our CRA Legacy G-Suite account. At the moment it appears I can create sites and make them viewable to CRA members, but not make them public. So for the time being this site is created using a personal Google account. The Non Profits G-Suite may solve this, or we might be able to make use of a Personal Account long term (e.g. something like CRAWEBSITE@GMAIL.COM)

Some conclusions so far

It is really quick to create and manage content provided it can be done with the standard features.
Changes are not immediately published (which is good). When you decide to publish it shows you what has changed, and then you confirm. The changes then get published immediately. Google maintains version history of all changes
The styling of the site is restricted. There are good reasons for this e.g. so that the site works on different browsers and devices, and benefits in consistency. It will come down to whether we can create a design using the standard features that we like.
...

Implementation notes and reminders for me

This site has been created using a personal google account (mike@valentiniweb.co.uk) and made public as it appears that we are not able to do this using the CRA Legacy G-Suite account. It can be accessed by the standard URL https://sites.google.com/view/cratestsite1 and also as custom URL https://newsitetesting.chorleywoodresidents.uk. To be able to use the custom URL I have updated the DNS for chorleywoodresidents.uk to point at the Google Servers, and added a CNAME record added for newsitetesting to point at ghs.googlehosted.com
RSS feeds were supported in Classic Google Sites using a gadget and used for FixMyStreet. They are not directly supported in New Google Sites, so will need to use a third party or do some development of a Web App. (https://support.google.com/sites/forum/AAAATAKBXDQW8is8KWw7Ug?hl=en ) (https://www.steegle.com/apps-script )

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