While I am willing to agree that there are several options out there for simple, functional and effective website construction, I don't believe there is one with as many possibilities as Google sites.
Even at its most basic it affords you the teacher a hassle free way to create your own website, hosting links, homework assignments and anything else you can think of. I have a page on mine for each online lesson the students will engage in, that way rather than having to give them a long web address to visit (or even worse a collection of them) I can just direct them to my website.
But the great joy of google sites comes when you get the students to build their own pages online. Because of the collaborative nature of google sites not only can they easily and quickly create their own pages and sites really quickly (my 7th graders effectively built a large multi-page website in a couple of days) but they can then peer review and comment on each others work on the site. They can even edit each others work if you give them permissions.
For me that last bit is the final icing on the cake of google sites. The editing history option not only shows you who has edited what, but allows you to revert back to a previous version of a page if you are unhappy with the edits.
Some areas of the google site interface seem a little counter-intuitive (frustrating in a system that is so logically put together) so it is worth playing around with it. Google's own "how to" is pretty good but there are lots more out there.
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