Quietly and unannounced Google has added a much needed feature to its horizontal navbar element from within Google Sites: Horizontal navigation drop-down menus. Quite why these weren't included in the initial roll-out of the horizontal menu earlier this year isn't clear, but this new feature is much welcome and very needed by anyone that has more than a handful of pages to their site.

Somewhat rudimentary, it nonetheless adds an extra dimension to site navigation and bolsters the argument for the use of Google Sites, particularly in a corporate environment. Background colour and text colour of the dropdown menus are changeable so that they'll fit the site's colour scheme but there are a couple of issues that should have been addressed.

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Firstly, the background colour is just one solid block of colour (albeit with a 1 pixel white border around the whole submenu, which is helpful to visually separate it from underlying content) but with no border per item that would have allowed greater visual clarity and a more polished look. Secondly, the hover colour can't be set and is inherited from the main horizontal menu, which is fine except that if you wished the dropdown to have a complimentary colour scheme (say a black background with white text, if the main menu had a white background with black text) then the menu item, when moused over, will then disappear from view — which means, in reality, that the colours of the dropdown have to be similar to those of the main menu. Not a huge drawback but one that could easily have been rectified with a little thought beforehand. 

However, it's very nice to see that there is a small time delay when the mouse moves away from the dropdown menu. Probably only 300 milliseconds, but it makes the submenu very user-friendly. A nice touch, even though it's not programmable. So the good news is that a much needed feature has been added and one that is simple and quick to implement, and I shall be using it right away with client sites.

But... this is Google and not some backstreet developer working in his spare time, so resources should not be a problem, and it beggars belief that progress is so slow and clunky. It's also worth noting that a couple of weeks ago a very strange thing happened to the horizontal menu in Google Sites; the "Horizontal navigation selected text colour" option simply stopped working. Not just on my sites but across the whole of Google Sites. Google staff wrote on a help forum that a bug had occurred but plainly this was because they were introducing the new dropdown menu feature (which necessitated new code) and were covertly beta testing across the whole of the Sites' system. Why would any professional IT team do that? It does seem that the team that works on Google Sites is either not full-time or they have no one to really answer to, as the potential of this feature of Google Apps is enormous but is almost overlooked by Google itself, and is certainly looked down upon by web professionals who just aren't aware of what's on offer.

With better IT management, better marketing, and a more mature product, Google Sites could take on the corporate web sector and make a massive gain on the competition. Why isn't this the case? I don't know either.

Right, this may sound a little strange, but why use WordPress for my main website and then use Posterous for the actual blog? Yes, it sounds odd, but there are good reasons. Whilst WordPress is turning into an all singing CMS solution that's hugely configurable, it's also not the most elegant solution for quickly putting audio, video, and documents online at the drop of a hat. Which is where Posterous comes in. Though e-mail was touted as the favoured and easiest method to get content on to a Posterous blog, now that the "Post by web" option has been implemented it's even easier.

If I want to blog I want things to be fast, simple, and easy. That way there's no halt in any creative process and I can maximise my effective use of time. And Posterous seems to fit the bill here, perfectly. And the way I decided to integrate it into my website works along the same lines. Firstly I set up a DNS account with ZoneEdit, which was simple and FREE. Then I set up a Google Apps acount for the domain, which was simple and FREE — here's a pattern forming here. Then I set up (and I know you're with me) an account with Posterous (yes, which was simple and FREE). Using ZoneEdit's control panel I created a sub domain (blog.gregwallis.net) that I pointed at Posterous's servers and then linked that domain to my blog in the Posterous admin page. All super simple, everything worked, and completely free of charge. Sure I pay for hosting the main site separately, because it's a WordPress installation running on Linux, but that's about it. And it's worth noting that Google almost instantly crawls the site and ranks it. It really is close to a perfect solution.

For those that are on a very tight budget (and no shame in that) the addition of the new Pages feature that Posterous has just added, it's possible to have a small and streamlined website for absolutely zero, apart from the cost of the domain name itself. All that's required for an extra professional gloss is the modification of an existing theme to give the site a corporate identity. Now if you look at this blog you'll notice that there's no mention of Posterous except in the footer, where I have provided a link to the main Posterous site by way of courtesy and so as to not fall foul of their terms & conditions.  Not that I wish to hide the fact that it's run on Posterous(you'll have gathered by now I'm somewhat enamoured with it) just I hate the fly-out branding at the top of the page that is pretty much normal. Quite easy to modify and they still get a credit.

This works for me, and I think it would work for a lot of other people too, particularly very small or part time businesses. Simplicity is the key, and all too many people get carried away with the idea of building a huge flashing online presence, but I humbly suggest that starting small and simple is the best way to go.