Google Sites is an application that makes building a website for your organization as easy as editing a document. With Google Sites, teams can quickly gather a variety of information in one place - including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text - and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, an entire organization, or the world. As a business user, you can use Google Sites to set up internal project sites, intranets, or public-facing sites. Read this guide for basic steps on creating a Google Site and customizing it for your organization. You’ll learn to:
Access Sites To create a new site, or to view a list of sites that you own or can edit:
Enter https://sites.google.com/a/your_domain.com in your browser (but be sure to replace your_domain.com with your actual domain name).
Whenever you're signed in to your Google Apps account, you'll see other apps listed at the top left of the page. Click Sites to access your sites list. If you don’t see the link, make sure your network administrator has Sites enabled on the Google Apps control panel. Create your site
Use a site template First choose whether or not you want to work from an existing site template. There are hundreds of template options, ranging from public-facing business sites and work portfolios, to intranets and training sites, to pages for clubs and upcoming events. Each template features a topic-specific layout and professional appearance.
Give your site a name Enter a name for your site. Initially, this becomes the unique part of your site’s URL. If you want a different URL, just make the appropriate changes in the Site location field (don’t worry, this won’t change your site title). For guidelines on choosing a URL, see selecting a location for your site. Keep in mind that the name and URL you choose must be unique within your domain. You can change the name later, but you won’t be able to change the URL.
Select a site theme Choose a look for your site. Each option comes with a preset background, color theme and font selection. You’ll be able to adjust fonts, colors and the background later, and you can always change the theme or build your own custom theme once the site has been created. The default theme is Iceberg. (Note: if you’re working from a template, your site might already have a theme. But you can choose another theme here, if you want.) Under More options you can categorize your site and enter a description to make your site more findable. Both fields are optional, and can be changed later under Manage Site > General. Once you’re all set, click Create at the top of the page. Your new site will appear. Add pages to your siteAt first your site only has a home page and site map. To create additional pages:
You can do most things with Web Page, like add text, insert photos and embed other content. The other options have more specific functions. Click Learn more to pull up a guide to different page types.
Edit pages in your siteWith Google Sites, you don’t have to be a web designer to make something that looks good. Editing a page is just like editing a document, although you can do much, much more than just adding text. And if you are familiar with HTML, CSS, or Javascript, you can enter code directly using our HTML options (see below).
Add objects, apps and gadgets Under the Insert tab, you can add a wide variety of objects, apps and gadgets to enhance your site even further. This is also where you can embed Maps, Calendars, and Google Docs. Some of the most useful apps and gadgets include:
Click on More gadgets to browse even more add-ins built by Google and third-party developers, or to search for a particular gadget. You'll be able to preview each gadget before adding it to your site.
Customize your siteFrom the Manage Site page you can edit the site layout, add your organization’s logo to the header, choose colors and fonts, and build the right site structure for easy navigation.
Define site structure and dimensions
This will take you to Site layout in the Manage Site settings page, the overall control center for your site.
Once you’ve chosen your site’s overall layout, you can customize each component individually. Customize your header Something you’ll probably want to do is put your organization logo on the header.
Adjust colors, fonts and backgrounds From Manage Site, click Colors and Fonts on the left sidebar. Here you can change the colors, fonts and backgrounds across the site. The basic site page, the header, the text content areas, navigation menus and gadgets are all independently customizable. Check the display on the bottom of the screen to preview your changes before saving them. Organize site navigation It’s important to make your site easy to navigate for your users. In Site layout, you can add items to the sidebar and configure the built-in Navigation menu.
Click OK and then Save in Site layout. Test out your navigation to make sure it’s what you want. Share your site Now that you've created your site, share it with others! First, you’ll need to decide if you want to make the site public or keep it private inside your team or organization. You’ll also want to decide whether you want to open up the site for collaboration or limit others’ access to view only. Share publicly or across your organization
Here you can set Visibility options to make your site public on the web, accessible only within your organization, or private for a list of specified users. You can also choose whether pages can be found via search, or accessed only by linking to it directly. Share and collaborate with work groups or teams To restrict access to a specific group of people, or to give people different levels of access:
The default share setting allows all users in your organization’s domain to access and edit the site. To make changes, click Change. |