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In this tutorial, l will quickly walk you through step by step on ‘how to create your own free website’ – using Google Sites.
This is not a theoretical tutorial where l write a bunch of words trying to explain the concepts.
Rather, this is a practical tutorial where l show you some behind the scenes staff i.e. through screenshots and info graphs.
So grab your laptop or IPad – and follow along with me as lm about to begin this tutorial.
Let's get started!
1. Head over to the Google Sites main website – and signup using your email address.
Once done, you’ll be logged into your account where you can get started.
2. You'll see a template library – where you can pick any template of your choice.
You can easily choose your favourite template – then customise it based on your needs.
But personally, l like to build my sites from scratch – because templates limits you on how you can design i.e. you're forced to confine within the template's boundaries.
3. Now that we've selected a ‘Blank Template', it's now high time to choose a theme.
There's a couple of free themes that you can choose from – but personally, l like to use the one called ‘Vision'.
NB: In order to find the ‘Themes option', simply head over to the top right corner where there's three options i.e. ‘Insert', ‘Pages', & ‘Themes'.
4. Now that we've chosen a theme, it's now time to name our site.
Simply head over to the top left corner in order to get started.
In this case, let's just call the website; ‘Demo Site’.
You can also upload your logo if you wish to do so.
5. Now that we've named our site, it's now time to write a welcome message on the site – since this is the main home page which most visitors will see.
For the purpose of this tutorial, let's just write something like; ‘Welcome To My Website'
6. After completing this stage, it's now high time to start adding elements to the site – and you can find them on the right column of the dashboard.
There's a lot of elements that you can choose from – but for most beginners, the ‘Text', ‘Images’, & the ‘Embed’ functions are the most useful ones.
You can also choose the type of layout that you want to use for your site – there's no limits here!
7. Next, we're just going to add an image and some few text to the site.
In order to get started, simply click on the ‘Text’ icon or ‘Image' function.
You can also change the font if you wish – since there's a ton of fonts to choose from.
NB: You can also embed videos or other existing pages i.e. using the embed feature.
8. Assuming that you're done adding some text and images on your site, it's now high time to add a footer.
To add a footer, simply click on the bottom centre of your site – then add some few information related to your company.
9. Now that we've completed the home page of our site, it's now high time to start adding pages to our site.
If it is an article based blog, these pages will be your blog posts – but you can also build some category pages if you wish to do so.
In order to get started, head over to the top right corner again – where there's the ‘Insert', ‘Pages' & ‘Themes' option.
Simply click on the ‘Pages’ option – and once you click it, simply check at the bottom right corner where you'll see these icons.
Simply select the ‘New Page' option in order to add a page to your site.
Once you select it, you'll be asked to enter the name of that page.
For the purpose of this tutorial, l will just call it ‘Page 1: Demo Page’
10. Once done, you'll see that you'll now have 2 pages on your site i.e. the home page, as well as the new page that you've added.
In order to add some content on the new page, simply repeat the previous process that we've done to create the home page – but this time around, you'll now be adding some blog posts or articles that you've written in your Word app.
11. Assuming that you've done this stage, it's now high time to configure some few settings before publishing the site.
Simply head over to the to navigation of your site – and click the gear icon.
12. Once selected, you'll see a sub menu which looks like this:
The first function is the ‘Navigation' function – which allows you to choose whether you like the ‘side navigation’ menu or the ‘top navigation’ one.
But personally, l like the ‘side navigation' option.
13. The second function is the ‘Brand Images' function – which allows you to change your logo, as well as to upload your favicon.
14. Another important function is the ‘Analytics' function – which allows you to install your Google Analytics Tracking ID – so that Google can track your website stats.
15. Assuming that you've completed configuring your settings, it's now high time to publish your site to the world.
Simply click on the ‘Publish' button on the top right corner of the dashboard.
16. Enter the name of your choice i.e. that will be the url of your site
Keep in mind that some names are already taken – thus, you might need to twerk the name a lil bit – until you find the one which is available for use.
Also, you'll be using a sub domain – which starts with sites.google.com/view/your-site-name (or something like that).
But if you want a custom domain, you must purchase it from GreenGeeks – then use it instead of a sub domain.
17. Once done, simply hit the publish button – then your site will be live on the web.
In order to view it, simply click on the view button on the bottom centre of the dashboard.
18. Once you click it, you'll see the published version of your site i.e. how your site actually looks like in real life.
NB: You need to signup for Google Search Console & Google Analytics – to request indexing, as well as to track your stats respectively.
Wrapping Up
Wrapping Up
I hope that you've gained some value from this post – since l tried by all means to be as transparent as possible in this tutorial.
If you follow along these steps, you can easily come up with your own nice looking website – even without prior experience.
Of course – you might experience some few challenges here and there – but we all know that, the best way of learning a task is by actually doing it.
Thus, take action and get started ASAP.
Let me know in the comments if you have some further questions.
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