How to create your own Google Sites website

Posted on November 25, 2008 at 5:55 am

Google Sites allows you have your own content available on the web. Unlike blogs, Google Sites work like MS Sharepoint wherein you can control who can and cannot edit the contents of your site.

With this website creation tool you don’t have to install anything to write your own page – you can do them online anywhere as long as you are online. Small offices who want to have their own Web space will also benefit since this is a good way to have a website with the least cost of ownership.

To start making your own website go to http://sites.google.com, you will need to have your own Google account to be able to access this site. If you have an existing GMail account, that will work, you don’t have to make a new one. After logging in, click Create site button to start the

The page creation form will appear. Type in the specific details needed for your site. You don’t have to follow the texts or themes I inputted below since this is customized per page:

The first entry is the site name. This is like a title of your site so make sure it matches the purpose of your site:

Next comes the site description where you can add a short descriptive tag line or catch phrase for your site:

Turn on mature content warning if you plan to add nudity or contents not suitable for minors:

If you want to share the website to limited group then choose “Only people I specify can view this site”, else click “every on the the world can view this site”.

Then choose a design theme. Pick a color scheme and pattern that matches your site description. It should blend with the contents that you will later add to the site.

Finally, type in the secret captcha word to authenticate you as human. This allows Google to prevent robots to spam the server with fake accounts:

NOTE: If the chosen URL is available it will direct you to the home page of the site, otherwise you will need to enter a new site name that is not yet taken. In this case, “shadesofgreen” is already taken so I used “shadesofgreensite”:

From here you can start editing and adding the pages. Click Edit page to start updating the main page:

You should see the online editor come up where you can put your content and save the changes you did:

At this page you can either save or cancel. You can also create a new page to add more pages to your site.

Saving the file transfer you to the saved file’s location so you can see the changes that you did:

Users familiar with online blogging tools or MS Sharepoint will be right at home with this simplistic web site editing tool. If you plan to have your own website, Google Sites is an exciting way get started with it. It is easy to learn and you won’t have to worry about installing a web editor or managing your own web server since Google will host is for you.

Ben Carigtan writes about technology, websites, computers and how to get the best out of them.

» Filed Under Web Site Tips

Comments

5 Responses to “How to create your own Google Sites website”

Dave said on : November 28th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

Hey there,

Good introductory post about Google Sites! One of the hard things seems to be truly customizing the Sites look and feel. To challenge it a bit, we’re running an online competition for people to create the most heavily customized site – http://codekindness.org/blog/g.....mpetition/ .

Note that there is a big difference between Sites and SharePoint (I’m currently consulting with some nonprofits to build their MOSS 2007 Internet site). MOSS 2007 is powerful out of the box, but requires an extremely challenging learning curve to customize, and then, only offers customization in limited ways.

Google Sites is far more approachable, although it’s lightweight: a full company Intranet might not be appropriate for deployment across Sites.

Cheers,
–Dave

bernard horsfall said on : January 31st, 2009 at 11:29 am

I’ve been given a site by my son in law and daughter as a present. I think I have set about creating it in the wrong way. I’m an actor.So far I’ve put some photos of various roles on the site. Now I don’t quite know what to do nxt, how to write words and how generally to organise the site. “Online Tech Tips” seems to have much more of the sort of info I needed,and should have taken notice of to start with. Should I now try to go back to square one ,and if so how, andd what would I do with the photos i have so far put on it? I’d be very grateful for your comments and assistance. thanks a lot.Bernard

Tom Deacon said on : February 1st, 2009 at 5:47 am

I want to create my own website.On my site I want to post my song lyrics and poetry in hopes of getting ‘noticed’ so that musicians needing people to write lyrics for them can read mine and contact me if interested.(I’ve already entered poem/lyrics contests).I’d also want to warm of online scams that I personally have fallen victim to.This would be a fairly simple,or basic site with the possibility of letting other sites such as legitimate survey sites advertise their site on mine.To be honest I want to make a bit of money at it too (since 2 below knee leg amputations and kidney failure in past 3 years left me unable to work).Is Google Sites what i’m looking for?

John Ronner said on : April 13th, 2009 at 11:39 pm

Sites Google seems perfect, except for one glaring flaw. There is no obvious way (to me, at least) to shut off the ability of others to edit one’s Web site once it goes public. Does anyone have instructions on how that’s done?