1st
Google Sites - Oh so Easy, Just Don’t Press the Red Button
Its no secret that I’m a fan of Google Sites, hell I even wrote about my love for Google’s latest web app the other day. Despite my moving to Google Site’s for my company’s wiki, I can’t get over the lack security around protecting and backing up a wiki’s data.
Google Sites offers no way to backup your data, which normally would be fine. However, in the case of Google Sites the inability to backup a wiki is unexceptable. You trust Google to have some kind of intelligent backup plan in place. For instance, I use GMAIL and have no problems sleeping since I know that I can trust GMAIL to reliably store all my emails. But then comes a scary feature in Google Sites, the “Delete this Site” button. The very word “Delete this Site” sends chills down my spine.
I ran a few tests, and learned that the “Delete this Site” button works really well, a little to well. As far as I can tell, the button completely erases your wiki. There is no undo feature. There is no 14 day restore feature. And even worse, there is no backup feature.
As a wiki owner this isn’t ok. Just think what one disgruntled employee is capable of doing in seconds. Deleting a site should have some sort of 60-day undo process. Or at least a back-up option, even though that shouldn’t be necessary for any decent web app.
So with that I say, For Frak’s Sake.
