Google Sites are a great tool for teachers and students. They can be student e-portfolios, collaborative writing sites, and much more. On the teacher side, they are a wonderful way to communicate information about your class to students and their families. If you create a page using the Announcements template, you communicate current news and information or homework assignments and keep the newest posts at the top. Families can subscribe to the page and get an email message whenever you update it.
The problem, though, is that the default “Subscribe to posts” button that appears on the page doesn’t work for all browsers and can’t be removed. The good news is that there is another Google tool, Feedburner, that gives people a way to subscribe to your updates. There are several steps, but it’s actually very easy to do.
- Log into your Google account. Create or go to the page on your website that visitors will subscribe to. Make sure you the page uses the Announcements page format. If you need to change the page format, click the gear menu in the upper right and go to Page Settings.
- Scroll down the page until you locate the orange “Subscribe to posts” button. This may not be visible until your site is public.
- Right click on the subscribe button (control + click on a Mac) and copy the subscription link. Depending on your browser, you might see different wording (Copy link location in Firefox, Copy link address in Google Chrome, Copy link in Safari).
- Open a new tab (File > New Tab or Command + t). Go to Feedburner. Because it is a Google service, you should already be signed in and see your email address in the upper right corner. Locate the box marked “Burn a feed right this instant.”
- Paste the URL you copied in step 3 into the box. DO NOT CLICK NEXT!
- Edit the URL. Change https to http. Now you can click Next.
- Give your feed a name. This is the title people will see in their email when they subscribe. Make it short but descriptive. Do not worry about changing the feed address. Click Next.
- At the bottom, click the tiny “Skip directly to feed management” link.
- On the screen that appears, click Publicize, then Email Subscriptions, then Activate.
- Scroll down the page and copy the email subscription code. Be sure to highlight all the code before copying.
- Return to the tab with your website. Click on the pencil icon to edit the page, then click on the HTML link at the upper right.
- Paste the code you copied in step 10 into the box, then click Update.
- Add any extra text you want to the page, then save your changes. For example, you may want to add something along the lines of: “Please be aware the Subscribe to posts link below does not work correctly for all browsers. To receive an email message when this page is updated, click the Subscribe to Class Announcements by Email link here:”
- Pat yourself on the back. You did it!
