Table of Contents Create a Site
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Table of Contents Create a Site ................................................................................................................. 2 Customize your Site ..................................................................................................... 5 Themes ........................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Site Layout ..................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Colors and Fonts ......................................................................................................................................................... 7 Site Title ....................................................................................................................... 8 Choose Page Types ..................................................................................................... 10 Choosing Page Location .............................................................................................. 14 Change the Page Name Element of the URL ............................................................... 17 Page Layouts .............................................................................................................. 18 Embed Documents, Gadgets, Media, and other Google Tools ..................................... 19 Share, Publish, and Protect a Site ............................................................................... 20 Page-level Permissions ......................................................................................................................................... 22 Setting permissions for a specific page .......................................................................................................... 22 Different Types of Permission ............................................................................................................................. 23 How do I create a website using Google Sites? Create a Site To create a site in Google Sites you must first login to your school Apps account and go to Google Sites within your school Apps domain. 1. In the top left corner of any product main page, you will see a list of links. 2. Click Sites. Once you have logged in to Google Sites, you can create a new site. You can design your own site, or you can choose a site template to help you get started. Some common site templates are highlighted on the site creation page, or you can click Browse the gallery for more to see more template options. To create a new site, follow these steps: 1. Click on the button located in your Google Sites directory that appears you've signed into Google Site with your school Apps account. 2. Select Blank template if you would like to design your own site from scratch, or click the Browse the gallery link to choose from a variety of site templates, including the ACC Template. 3. Type your Site name - this will also auto-populate your Site URL to be sites.google.com/a/austincc.edu/your-site-name. 4. If you would like to change your site URL, you can change what appears after austincc.edu. Just type the new name for your site in the box following austincc.edu. o Please note: Choose your site url with care. If you change the site name later, your site url will not change. The URL you choose can't be changed after you create your site or be used again if the site is deleted. 2 How do I create a website using Google Sites? When selecting a URL for your site, keep the following in mind: • Your site name (and URL) can't conflict with an existing site name. • Site URLs can only use these characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9. Beneath the site URL, there are also 2 additional sections, Choose a theme and More Options (both will be discussed later). • You can select a design for your site in the Choose a theme section (under Customize your Site). • You will be able to add a description and category for your site and select the sharing access level in the More Options section. More Options - When creating your site, you can also add site categories and a site description in the More Options section. Categories allow you to group related sites and make them accessible together within the popular categories list for your school Apps domain. Categories are deemed popular when they contain more than five sites. Categories can have multiple words such as 'math department' or 'student projects.' For example, if you used a 'math department' category for your site, and all other math teachers used that category, then someone at your school could browse the 'math' category to view all 'math' sites. Or you could use a 'athletics' category that identifies the sites that have information related about school sports teams. Please note: The site category setting does not affect search results. A Site Description can be added to identify the purpose of your site. This will appear next to your site name in the list of sites at your school's domain. Both the Category and Site Description settings are not required and can be modified after the site is created. When in the site creation process, you can add the site category and description in the More Options section beneath the site name and URL: 1. Click anywhere on the More Options section on the 'Create a new site' page. 3 How do I create a website using Google Sites? 2. Type in the names of the categories for your site in the 'Site Categories' box, separated by commas (e.g. "math department, ms. smith"). 3. Type in a short description of your site in the 'Site Description' box (e.g. "Ms. Smith's math class site with homework assignments, class schedule, parent newsletter, and class materials"). 4. While creating your site, you can select a broad sharing access setting for collaboration within your site in the More Options section beneath the site name and URL. The following are the types of settings you can choose: 4 How do I create a website using Google Sites? You may change your sharing options at any time after you leave this screen by clicking the More Actions button and selecting Site Permissions from the drop down menu or by choosing to Manage your Site. Customize your Site Google Sites allows site owners to easily change the overall look of a site without needing to use or know HTML. For example, you can keep using a theme from Google Sites but change the color of links. Or you can move the sidebar of your site to the right side – or remove it completely. Google Sites allows you to make these changes via the More Actions menu - > Manage Site. On the left-hand side, towards the bottom of the Manage Site area. The ability to change how a site looks is divided into three major areas: 5 How do I create a website using Google Sites? Themes • • • • • • • Please note: If you switch themes and you had previously made specific changes to colors/fonts, your previous changes will be discarded with the new theme. Site Layout Click on Change Site Layout.- (which includes the Sidebar and Site Logo). Your site has 4 main elements to the page: 1. Header - this is where your site title and logo appear and applies to all pages within your site. 2. Side bar - this is where you can add navigation links and additional information via text boxes and applies to all pages within your site. 3. Page content - this is where the individual page content appears, differs for every page in your site. 4. Footer - this is where the Google Sites specific links appear, which you cannot modify. This will appear on all pages within your site. You can make site-wide changes to the header and footer within the 'Site Layout' section in your site settings. Site width: You have a few options as to how wide you would like your site to appear to a user. You can use the theme default (selected for you), or you can set a custom size. 6 How do I create a website using Google Sites? If you want to set an absolute width in pixels, you can enter your size in the box as 800 px. This means that no matter what screen resolution or size of monitor a user has, your site will always be 800 pixels wide. You can also set a relative width by percentage. This means your site will take up a percentage of the browser (centering in the middle where there is extra room) and will scale to fit whatever browser or monitor size the user has. Header height: With this setting you can choose to remove the header from your site, use the height of your site logo, set a custom size, or use the value specified by your design theme. The header will change on all pages within your site. Recommendations: • If you are not using a logo, it is easiest to stay with the theme value as it has been optimized for the graphic design and layout of your site. • If you are using a logo, it is easiest to let Google Sites optimize the height of the header to match your logo. Some things to consider are to not use a logo that is too tall, as a larger header will take away space from your main content. • If you remove the header entirely, the name of your site and a site logo will not appear at the top - this can take away some of the information about the site and some of the design aesthetic. • The custom size setting should be used if the other settings are not to your liking or you already know the dimensions you would like to use. Sidebar: You can choose whether to include the sidebar, the location of the sidebar on your site (right/left), and