Create custom themes and templates in new Google Sites

October 6, 2021

Google has announced the addition of custom themes and templates to new Google Sites! Custom themes allow you to create customized sets of fonts, text styles, colors, buttons, and more that you can save and use for future sites. Refer to the Google Help Center for more information on creating custom themes.

Animated GIF, cursor is moving around in the new Google Sites editor view, selects Themes from the right sidebar, and proceeds to create a theme.

Custom templates, a long-awaited feature from classic Google Sites, allow you to create new Google Sites layouts that you can upload to the U-M Google Template Gallery for future use. Unlike custom themes, the custom Template Gallery is publicly available to anyone in U-M Google, meaning anyone with access to U-M Google Drive can upload or copy templates from the gallery. Refer to the Google Help Center for steps to create custom templates and upload them to the Template Gallery.

You can also share a template preview with collaborators by adding “/template/preview” to the end of the site URL. This will allow any collaborator with read or edit permissions to view or copy the draft site without uploading it to the Template Gallery first.

Example new Google Sites URL

According to Google, custom templates should now be available, and custom themes should begin showing up in U-M Google on October 6, 2021, and could take three days or longer to become fully visible.