Step 5 - Creating a Website

Now that you have found out part or all of the information on your property's residents, you may wish to consider creating a website to make the findings available to all.

The free Google website creator makes it relatively simple to create your own professional-looking website. This can be relatively simple or, as in the case of my Albany Street one, complex, but whatever the scale using Google sites makes it relatively straightforward. So even if you have no web creation experience, it is worth having a go. Hopefully, this guide will help you through the process.

To begin, you need to have a gmail account. You can create a gmail account if you do not already have one by going to https://www.google.com/gmail/. Even if you have one already, it may be worth considering creating a specific gmail account that can be linked to your website, possibly with a similar name. I created albanysreetedinburgh@gmail.com. This can be useful in that it provides an email address to include in your website that is different from your personal one.

Now, with your Gmail open, using Chrome (or an equivalent Internet web browser) go to: https://sites.google.com/ You will then be asked to enter your gmail address and password. This page will then appear.

Click on Create

You will now go to this page.

I'd recommend using the Blank Template. When the page opens that will be highlighted so leave that as be. You now need to name your site. Possibly the number and street name. In this we have named the site, 11 Somewhere Street.

Then click the box I’m not a robot.

You will see that your website address is now shown - in this example https://sites.google.com/site/11somewherestreet

You should note this for future reference.

No click again on Create After a short time, this page will then appear.

In the top right hand corner are these three symbols: edit (pencil symbol), add a page (+page symbol) and site menu (wheel symbol) which brings up a menu for printing, saving, etc.

Click on the pencil (edit)

Two boxes will appear on the page. In the first, the page heading, will be 'Home'. the second box will be blank.

You can change ‘Home’ to whatever you want. Iin our example we have changed Home to 'History of 11 Somewhere Street'.

And in the text box below you can now type in or copy from a word document relevant text.

Save this. ( And at each step remember to save if prompted to do so). Once saved you will need to click on the pencil symbol to edit further.

If you wish to return to work on your site, you will need to be signed into the related gmail account and then open your site - using your URL web address e.g. https://sites.google.com/site/11somewherestreet .

Go to page you wish to work on and at very bottom click on Sign In and then you can use the pencil or add page or other menu controls to work on the site.

To add another page to the website click on Page+ image in top right-hand corner. This page will then appear. Name this page - in our example 'Humphrys Forgery Trial'.

This page automatically will link as a sub-page to the page you had open when you clicked to add a page. You have the option by ‘Select a location’ to move it. Or, as you will see later, you can move it later if required.

Click Create when you have named your page.

You will then be taken to the page where you can enter or copy in text. (We will look at including images later)

Having saved that page, now return to the main page (you can click on relevant page on left-hand side menu.

We will now link the mention of the forgery trial to our new sub-page. Highlight the text you wish to be the web link – here Humphrey’s Forgery Trial

Then click on link chain symbol (URL linking) on top line menu - here highlighted.

That will automatically create a hyper-link to the sub-page so clicking on that will take a reader to the sub-page. You can also use this URL linking button to create a link to an external website. Instead of the Sites Pages Box, click on Web Address (Link to this URL) You will then be able to insert the relevant web address.

Remember to save,

This menu also enables you to make changes to text as you can in a word document(type, text size, bold, itallics, underline, text, etc). The Tx symbol can be used to highlight text in edit mode and return it to default type settings.

To move pages around within your site, click on Site Map to get this page.

Then click on Manage Pages. You will now be able to move pages around – helpful if you have many pages and sub-pages and these need re-ordered.

To include images in a web page open edit. Then click on Insert (left-hand of top menu) and this menu appears. Click Image.

Click on Image. Click on Upload images and upload relevant JPG from you computer.

The image will then appear. You can add text that will ink to the image if you wish. Click OK.

Depending on the size of the JPG file, the image may be far too large. However, you can alter it by the menu that appears. This enables you to position (right, centre or left) - change size of image (small, medium, large, 100% or Original) - and align with text or not. And delete.

By changing size and aligning as required you can position the image appropriately.

At any stage you can check how it looks by entering your web address on your browser.

Hopefully, with this guide you can publish your research on the web - and share with the world!

If you do create a website please email me the link 9and any comments you may have about this guide) as I am considering creating a website that will direct people to all the relevant resident history sites for the New Town.

Thanks

Barclay Price email: albanystreetedinburgh@gmail.com