Google has finally brought templates to Google Sites, its free online tool used to create and edit wiki-based websites

. The new feature builds on top of Google Docs document templates that let you quickly dress up your presentations, spreadsheets, and documents with different looks.

If you suck at HTML/CSS coding and are a lousy designer, you can now create sites using free templates in the public gallery. We counted around fifty templates at press time scattered across various categories like family, wedding, charity, clubs, neighborhood associations, business, government and non-profits, and more.

You can’t apply a template to your existing site at the moment. To start a new site from a scratch using a template, log in to Google Sites, create a new site by clicking the “Create New Site” button, and choose a desired design from a couple of default templates or browse the gallery for more. Only basic template customization is supported at the moment, stuff like changing typefaces, font sizes, and text colors. You can’t edit CSS or add JavaScript. If you have created a cool site, you can submit it to the public gallery as a design template.

Businesses using Google Apps can share site templates with coworkers within their organization. Scott Johnston, a Google product manager, wrote the following in an official blog post:

The rate that businesses are adopting Google Sites has surpassed our expectations, and templates will make Sites even more useful by dramatically reducing the time it takes to set up collaborative workspaces like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites and employee profile pages. Templates let you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page layouts, navigation links, theming and more.

Some of the highlights of Google Sites include the ability to create full copies of sites and the ability to copy sites from Google Apps to Sites and vice versa. If you’ve used Google Docs, you’ll feel right at home in Google Sites. Besides the usual HTML formatting features, Google Sites has a bunch of website-specific editing features. You can embed Google gadgets, insert YouTube and Google Video items, Google Calendar entries, Google Docs documents, Google Maps items, and Picasa slideshows and galleries. Even though the sites created using Google Sites show no ads, you can enable AdWords and AdSense adverts if you plan to monetize your site.

Check out the following example sites created using Google Sites: employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites, and employee profile pages.

Read more at the official Google blog

Christian’s Opinion

Google Sites has gone a long way in its short-lived existence. The product arrived on February 28, 2008 as a Google Page Creator replacement. Prior to that, the service had started out as JotSpot’s webpage creation tool aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses. Google acquired JotSpot in October 2006 and re-branded the service as Google Sites. At first, it was part of Google Apps so it required a dedicated $10 domain from Google, but it later became available separately from the Google Apps suite.

Introduction to Google Sites
No video? Watch it on YouTube!

Anyone can now use Google Sites without having to purchase a domain – all that’s needed is a Google Account sign-in and a mobile SMS verification to prevent fraud. If you don’t want your site URL in this form: http://sites.google.com/site/sitename/, you can set up Google Sites to display the site on your own domain, but you’ll need to change the domain’s CNAME records in order to prove your ownership of the domain. Google Sites doesn’t support RSS feeds for site updates and anonymous comments. Free accounts get 100MB of storage for the site content (10GB for Google Apps users).