Google Apps Hacks

238 GOOGLE APPS HACKS



Even more communicative than a blog is a discussion group. Google Groups is the Google app that

handles Usenet (an international, distributed bulletin board system) discussion newsgroups. But

Google adds their own, non-Usenet groups to the mix, and you too can create one of these. Just

click the “Create a group” button shown on the Google Groups home page after you’ve logged in, as

shown in Figure 10-4.

Groups can be both public or private and invite-only, as the set-up dialog displayed in Figure 10-5

illustrates. Once you’ve created a group, you can edit certain pages in it—like the welcome screen—

with the Google Page Creator interface. The result may look similar to the sample group pictured in

Figure 10-6.



The published page



The Google Groups start page

239  - SET UP YOUR OWN DISCUSSION GROUP WITH GOOGLE GROUPS

Inviting a new member means that an invitation will be sent to their email account. However, if they are using

Gmail, chances are that this invitation will land in their spam folder, where it’s likely to be ignored. You can get

around this problem by clicking “Invite members” and going to the “Add members directly” tab. Note that,

as Google warns on that page, you are supposed ...