If you are a Google Docs user, you may want to check out the plugin that Ray Hoh  developed for the Commons.  Google Docs Embed lets you embed your Google documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and forms directly into WordPress posts and pages.  Once embedded, you can continue to make changes in Google Docs, and your changes will be automatically reflected on your WordPress site.

Getting Started

Login into your Google account, and find the item you want to embed.  First, you’ll  need its establish a public url.  In Google Docs, go to “File>>Publish to the Web”.  A dialogue box should appear, similar to the one below:

Make sure that the “Automatically republish when changes are made” checkbox is checked.  This will allow you to make changes to your Google Docs and have theses changes automatically reflected on your WordPress site.

Copy the “Document Link,” highlighted in red, above.

Now go to your WordPress dashboard, and open up the post or page where you want to embed your document.  On a new line, type the following shortcode:

There are other custom parameters you can use in the shortcode exression.  Here is a description of them all:

• “width” – By default, this tries to use the current theme’s content width. If this doesn’t exist, the width is “100%”. Fill in this value to enter a custom width.

• “height” – Enter in a custom height for your Google Doc if desired.  Avoid percentages

• “size” – This parameter is only applicable to Presentations. You can enter in ‘small’, ‘medium’ or ‘large’. To set a custom width and height, use the ‘width’ and ‘height’ parameters listed above instead.

• seamless=”0” – use this parameter if you want to see the Google Docs header and footer

This plugin is very powerful when used with Google Forms.  You can set up a Google Form, embed it on your WordPress site, and have your readers enter data, and the data which they enter will be collected in a spreadsheet on your Google Drive.