Google Sites 2: A Sign-In Issue

One of the reasons why the ad for Google Sites caught my eye on Google’s home page was that I had just had a conversation with Karol Markosky who had built some wikis on Google Sites. She works at the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City (CSCS).

Before we looked at one of her wikis together, she told me a story that has still not come to its conclusion.

Some staff members are having sign-in problems and are unable to access some of the wikis they have created. Their hypothesis is that somehow their domain name cscs-ny.org is “wrapped” into Google Apps. But they had never signed up for Google Apps.

“It’s almost like 2 accounts were created under the same email address and sometimes when you type in your email address you get account A—which will let you sign in-- and sometimes account B—which won’t.”

CSCS has been trying to understand and rectify this for three months--but using a free service with Google (Google Sites) has meant, so far, there is little recourse. (Having never signed up for Google Apps means they do not qualify for the free phone support for "critical issues" that Steve Backman mentions when discussing being blocked from Gmail in one of his posts on the Idealware blog).

Through a colleague of a colleague, they have reached a human at Google, but not a human who knows anything about the issue. CSCS thinks it is possible they will have to abandon a few of the wikis they created since the administrator and the majority of participants cannot access them.

I will update this when I hear more, though if anyone can shed light, please do.

I suppose considering CSCS may have to abandon one of the inaccessible wikis, they are lucky that both for simplicity’s sake and because Google Sites doesn't currently allow page level permissioning, they chose to create a series of wikis for different users and projects, instead of one large wiki.