ok... so I use google apps for domains all the time... but the sites sometimes can be a little awkward to work with if you are used to hosting your own stuff...

but as time goes on, and you move things from here to there and use this technology and then the other.. you just want a nice stable place to put things you have out there... and while sites is far from perfect, it does get the job done and is pretty easy to update...

the biggest problem in using Google Sites is that you just don't have the freedom that comes with hosting things yourself... it forces you to think differently about your site...

using Sites well takes a while... first, you have to get past the limited designs... you have to learn how to customize them... then there is the problem of not being able to include things like javascript... forms... etc... if you want to do those things... then you have to learn how to write your own gadgets... not that hard... just kinda painful when you want to do simple things...

it's not the money... I already pay quite a bit of money to rackspace.com every month for hosting... but the benifits of using sites far outweighs the pain for some sites... like this one...

for a long time, my personal pages were just a pain... if I moved hosts or servers or whatever... my personal site always seemed to be that redheaded step child that got moved last... and the one that prevented me from shutting down the old service because I still needed it but it was just low on the totem pole....

now with sites... I don't have to worry with it... it's just there... easy to update... and I never have to worry with it...

I also use sites for other projects and customers... I don't have to worry about scaling them up for traffic... geographic dispersion... none of that... I just have to make sure that what the site does fits in the structure that sites provides...

before you dismiss sites out of hand... maybe you can use sites for some of your projects that are like my personal page...