Creating a website for your golf group on your own can be intimidating, lonely, and a lot of work. What if you could share duties with one or more other members in your group? Website Builder is built so that people can collaborate on it. However, sometimes getting someone else up to speed on the many aspects of Website Builder may be too much. In such a case, you can assign one or a few pages for another member to manage and they don't even have to learn or sign into Website Builder to do this. You can set up an account with Google Docs and create a page they can keep updated. If you've already created an account for your golf group for Google Picasa, Blogger, Groups or YouTube, you can use the same account for your Google Docs.

What is Google Docs?

Google Docs is three applications that work in your browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox, etc.). You do not put any software on your computer. The three applications are...

• Documents works like a word processor (like Microsoft Word, for instance)
• Spreadsheets works like Microsoft Excel
• Presentation works like Microsoft PowerPoint - remember when a speaker would use an overhead projector to display main points of a talk?

Learn how to use Google Docs

Complete help on how to use Google Docs is available at Google Docs Help.

What can you do with Google Docs?

Here are a few of the things you can do with Google Docs. You probably can think of more.

•     Docs makes collaboration on a document easy without having to pass the document back and forth. You and your collaborator(s) work on the same document over the Internet
•     All three Docs applications can extend Website Designer and Website Builder built websites with Docs-created web pages
•     By publishing a document created by one of these three apps, a web page is created to which Website Designer and Website Builder can link.
•     An administrator could assign updating duties for different pages to different people without giving them access to Website Builder.
•     An administrator could give each player of a group their own "About Me" profile or bio page online to help group members get to know each other better.
•     The presentation allows you to put a slide show on your website with either text, images or both

Using Google Docs with Website Builder

Integrating your Google Docs into your Website Builder site is a snap once you create a Google account to use Google Docs. If you've already created an account for your golf group for Google Picasa, Blogger, Groups or YouTube, you can use the same account for your Google Docs.

1. Create (or sign into) a Google Docs account
   
   
2. Create a Document (or Spreadsheet or Presentation)
   
   
3. Click on the "Share" link at the top of the page at far right
   
   
4. Click on the selection, "Publish as web page..."
   
   
   
   
5. Put a check mark in the box marked "Automatically re-publish when changes are made," if you want the web page to auto-update after any modifications.
   
   
   
   
6. Click the "Publish document" button.
   
   
7. Copy the link information (circled below).
   
   
   
   
8. Paste this link on one of your web pages or to put it on your menu...
   
   
9. From within Website Builder, select the "Menu" tab or Pages tab. If you want this page to automatically have a link on the navigation bar, select the Menu tab.

10. From the Menu or Pages tab click on the "Add a page" [] icon.

11. In the Program Tools folder, select the Google Docs page template by highlighting/selecting it (click once with left mouse button) and clicking on the Next button.
    
    

12. Enter information into "Page Properties" window and click Save & Close button.
    
    

13. Your new web page template is now on the navigation menu (if you used the Menu tab).
    
    
14. Paste your Google Doc published address (See Step 7 above) to the Doc Address box (green arrow below).
    
    

Note: You want to use the published address and not the share address. If you use the share address, Google Docs menu structure will be visible to your website viewers.

Allowing one or more members to update the Google Docs page

1. Sign into your Google Docs account

2. Select the Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation which you would like to allow updating by another member(s)
   
   
3. Click on the "Share" link at the far right hand side and select "Invite people..."
   
   
   
   
4. Click on the "People with access" tab. Just above the "Save & Close" button at the bottom, in blue, make sure it says "Let people edit without signing in." If it does not say that, click on the "Change" link and select "Let people edit without signing in."
   
   
   
   
5. You can invite people to view or edit the Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation. Make that choice below the "Invite" box. In the Invite box, type email address(es). If more than one address, separate with a comma and space. Type in a Subject and Message and then click the Send button. Emails will go out to those you included in the Invite box. It's a good idea to send yourself an email too to make sure that you can edit without signing in, so place a check mark in the box labeled "Send a copy to myself."
   
   
   
   
6. Those that you sent an invite to will receive an email with a link to the document which they can view and/or edit depending on what level of permission you gave them.