A student wants to create a portfolio of their work (documents) on Google Sites to present to prospective universities. What permission options would assist them in reaching their goal?
To ensure prospective universities can easily view both the website and the embedded work, the correct settings are: Published site: Public, Documents: Publish to the web.
When building a digital portfolio, individual file permissions matter just as much as the website’s overall visibility. If you set the Google Site to public but keep the embedded Google Docs restricted, admissions officers will hit an access barrier. They will see login prompts or error messages instead of your actual work, which can quickly derail their review process.
Publishing the site to the public allows anyone with the URL to navigate the portfolio pages. However, Google Workspace handles document permissions separately from the site platform. You must adjust the sharing settings for the individual files housed in your Google Drive. Selecting “Publish to the web” or updating the sharing link to “Anyone with the link can view” guarantees your essays, projects, and resumes display seamlessly directly on the webpage for every visitor, without requiring them to sign into a Google account.