Design your website

Home page: This first page is your “home page”. It is what people will see when they go to your site. The home page is good for defining your site and providing some basic information. It should not have too much information on it. Instead, your home page will link to other pages, which will contain things like: weekly lessons, discussion boards, calendar, resources, whatever additional things pertain to your class.

Name your site: Click on “untitled site” and type in your site’s name (Website tutorial). The name will then appear at the top of the screen and just above the “getting started” words.

Background of “getting started”

o Click “change image” and then “select image”. You can choose from the ones provided by Google sites (gallery) or you can use any images that you have on your Google image albums or on Google Drive. If you want something different, try clicking on “search”, and then type in some description of what you are looking for. I typed in “website design” and found a number of Google images which are not copyright protected. When you find an image you like, click on it, and then click “select” at the bottom. Hate it? Click “reset” and try again.

o Now, let’s change the words (and or font) from “Getting Started”. Left click and drag to delete “getting started” and replace with your choice of words (“Welcome to our website tutorial”).

o Do you like the heading? Click on Header Type and click on the options. Choose the one that works best for you.

Publish: I know this is not yet ready to be seen, but in this step we determine if the domain name that you want is available. Click Publish. Under “site location”, enter the address that you would like. I tried “website design” but it was already taken. So, I chose sdce-websitedesign which was accepted. Decide whether you want this site to be found using Google search. If you don’t (and probably don’t if it is a school site), uncheck that box. Then click save. Now, to see the site, click the down arrow next to publish and click “view published site”.

Add some text to the home page: Click on the Text Box icon on the right. A box will appear under the heading. You have the option of having your text be a title, heading or normal text. Insert a heading and then some text.

Next, let’s try some different themes. Click on “themes” and then try each of the options. Notice how they change the appearance of your home page. Also notice each has different fonts and colors associated with the theme. Note: No save is necessary, as everything is saved in Google Drive.

Now, let’s add a page. Click on pages and then click on the circle icon to add a page. Name your page (“Designing your website”) . You will now see that your page has been added, and a tab has been added to the top next to the “home” icon. To add to this page, click “insert”. I am going to copy the above text and then paste it into a text box on this page.

NOTE: After inserting the new text, you may have to clean it a bit if it was copied and pasted. You can edit text, add more, delete, etc.