Google Sites Woes

Wwhile there is not a complete solution to this issue, there are some steps you can take to ensure that your work is not lost when this error shows up.

First of all, click the reload button and your browser will display a warning prompt that your changes have not been saved, and will ask you if you are sure you want to reload. Importantly, do not reload the page here. You will lose all of your work. Instead, click cancel, and copy your work into your clipboard and onto a temporary storage area, such as Apple Notes or Google Docs. Once the content of your work has been saved somewhere, you can reload the browser. When Google Sites has refreshed, ensure that your internet connection is stable, then copy the work that you have stored elsewhere and paste onto Google Sites again. You may have to reformat your work. 

To minimize the amount of times that this error shows up, you should:

• edit the wiki when you have a strong internet connection

• look at the top bar on google sites: if it continually says saving... , then you probably don't have a good internet connection. In case your changes do not save, you should write content in google docs or apple notes then copy over

• consider writing your content in google docs or a notes app first, then copying them over

Publishing

In the top-right corner, there is a purple Publish button. Publishing updates the public wiki (vrwiki.cs.brown.edu) with all changes currently saved on Google Sites. It is not required to publish to save your work. Rather, you must ensure that the top navigation bar says "All changes saved". 

 In fact, if the navigation bar says "Saving...", and you press publish, it can prompt a loading screen that is impossible to exit. Thus it is recommended to only press publish if the navigation bar says "All changes saved".  

If it has displayed "Saving..." for more than five minutes, then your work is at-risk of being lost . As above, I'd recommend copying over your changes to your clipboard and Google Docs. 

If you're dealing with persistent slow load times:

Try working with only one context box at a time. While saving, you'll see a context box like below: