Getting Started. Creating a Site

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1 Barnard Library & Academic Information Services Creating Web Sites with Google Sites Lois Coleman, Research and Instructional Services Librarian April 2012 Getting Started The Help pages for Google Sites are at Log in to gbear using your gbear account username and password. Click on Sites at the top of the screen. You are now on a page with three items in the left-hand menu: 1. You re on the page My Sites in barnard.edu. After you ve created some sites, they will be listed here. 2. If you click on Deleted Sites you can view any sites you have deleted, and restore them within 30 days of deleting them. 3. If you click on Browse Sites you can view sites that have been created by others in gbear, if they have been made visible to the whole barnard.edu domain. Creating a Site 1. Select a template to use, or just use a blank page After you select a template, its name appears on the page with a red square round it. I suggest selecting the blank template for your first test site, and try out different templates later. 2. Name your site The URL of your site will be followed by your title. You can type in a different ending to the URL if you wish. 3. Select a theme Some themes have images or colors that go right across the page, but some have a visible border on the left and right, with a different colored background. Your theme can easily be changed later. 4. More options You can fill in site categories and a description later. You can choose who should have viewing and editing permission. Options are: o Everybody at gbear. o Only people I specify can view this site. o Also let anyone in the world view this site (make it public). You can click on Change and allow other people to become o owners of the site: to edit, organize and delete pages, edit themes and layout, delete the site, and invite other owners, editors or viewers, o or editors of the site, o or only to view the site. 1

2 After going through these options, go back to the top and click on Create: The Basic Web Page Now you have created a site, you can see what it looks like with no editing of the content; it just has Home at the top and a blank space for content. It is now live on the Internet and you could provide others your URL. The top right of this screen is a very important area. Edit this Create a More page new page actions More Actions Menu Manage Site: left sidebar Manage site is an important link You can reset Sharing and Permissions here Many other options are in the left sidebar after clicking on Manage Site: To delete the site, go to General. At the bottom of the left-hand sidebar menu are the options for changing the appearance of the site, like Themes. To remove the gbear logo, click on Site layout then in the Header section, click on change logo and select No logo. To change the colors on your site, click on Colors and Fonts. 2

3 To return to your Home page, click on the site s name at the top of the left sidebar. Click on the Edit page button (pencil symbol) to start inserting content: Top left navigation menu: Insert: allows you to insert things into your page like links to other pages, images, videos, slideshows, calendars, and spreadsheets. Format: allows you to format your text in various ways. Table: allows you to insert and edit tables, and works much like the table menu in Word. Layout: allows you to change the number of columns and sidebars on your page. Insert an Image Any image you want to upload should be in its final form; you can t crop or rotate your image once it s uploaded to Google Sites. After you ve browsed to find your image on the computer and click on it, it appears on the Add an image dialog page in Google Sites. Select the image on the Add an image dialog page (there will be a yellow square round it when it s selected) and click on OK. When you click on the image in the page, the image editing toolbar pops up (as long as you re in editing mode): If you want to put text next to the image, select the text wraps around image symbol: Click on the blue Save button at the top : Insert a Video To insert a YouTube video, go to Insert Video YouTube. Also, in another window or tab, go to and find the video you want. Click on the Share button, and copy the URL that is provided by YouTube. In Google Sites, paste in the URL of the YouTube video, include a title if you wish, and click on the blue Save button at the top. When you re in editing mode, you can t see the video, but after you click on Save, you ll be able to see it. Insert a Map To insert a Google map, go to Insert Map. Enter the location you want. You can move the red marker to get it exactly right. Change the title of the map, if you wish. You don t see the map until you save the page. 3

4 Insert Horizontal Line Useful for breaking up a page into smaller chunks of information. Place the cursor in the column where you want the line, then go to Insert Horizontal Line. The length of the horizontal line will be the width of the column. Insert a Calendar You can embed a Google Calendar on any page (but only a Google calendar). Go to Insert Calendar. The Google calendars to which you subscribe should be listed in the popup window. Click on the calendar you wish to insert, click on Select, and choose your customization options. Click on the blue Save button. Insert a Table To insert a table, go to Table Insert table. Drag the cursor to select the number of rows and columns you want, and click when you have them selected. This embeds the table in your page. After the table is embedded, you can change the width of a column or height of a row by dragging the white handle-bars of the selected cell. You cannot set the table borders to transparent; all tables will show lines around each cell. Creating a New Page Google Sites lets you create multiple pages in your site and offers several different types of page templates: Web Page A web page is the simplest kind of page; you can write content, embed gadgets, and arrange it however you like. Has standard formatting controls like bold, italic, and underline, bullets, and more. You can attach documents from your hard drive to the bottom of the page by clicking on Add files. There is a comment section for others to add comments to your page. Google Sites periodically saves versions of your page as you make edits, so it s easy to go back to earlier versions of the page to make comparisons or undo changes. Announcements Much like a blog, announcement pages display posts you make to the page in chronological order, starting with the most recent. For example, an announcement page would be great for keeping a record of weekly meeting notes, while providing quick access to the most recent meeting info. After creating a new page, you need to Select a location. o If you choose Put page at the top level it will be appear at the same level as Home in the left sidebar menu, not as a subpage of Home. o You can also choose a different location for a page, once you have other sidebar menu items set up. After you ve written some posts, they appear on the announcements/blog page in chronological order, with the most recent at the top. However, the posts appear in the left sidebar in alphabetical order, as this is the default for all pages in Google Sites. 4

5 To stop all your announcements/blog posts from appearing in the sidebar, click on Edit sidebar at the bottom of the sidebar, uncheck Automatically organize my navigation, and delete them from the sidebar. (See the section below on Changing Site Navigation and the Left Sidebar.) File Cabinet File cabinet pages let you store and organize files from your computer s hard drive, making it an easy way to share files with other users of your site. Comments do not go with the file; this is a limitation of this type of page. Anyone subscribed to the page will be notified when files are added, changed, or removed. You can also attach files to other pages by clicking on Add files at the bottom. List Page List pages let you make and organize lists of information. Items on the list are easy to add, edit, and remove, and viewers of the list can sort it by any column. Several different types of list templates are provided: o Action Items o Issues List o Unit Status o Create Your Own As with the file cabinet page, subscribers are notified when items are added, changed, or removed. Start Page A start page is a page that can be customized by each of its viewers (a little bit like an igoogle page for your site) to show a personalized set of gadgets. You can add personal gadgets that only you can see when you are logged in. Other people looking at the site will not be able to access this particular page. To add the first gadget, click inside the rectangular space with a dotted outline. To add additional gadgets, click on Add personal gadgets. You can also add a gadget to other pages using Insert More gadgets Changing Site Navigation and the Left Sidebar If you aren t happy with the way your pages are displaying the sidebar, click on Edit sidebar at the bottom. Next to Navigation, click on edit. If Automatically organize my navigation is checked, all the pages will be shown in the sidebar in alphabetical order. Uncheck Automatically organize my navigation. Now you can re-arrange the pages in the sidebar as you wish. To delete a page from the sidebar, click on the cross next to it. The page itself is not deleted, only the link on the sidebar. You use the arrows to the right to move a page up or down in the list (select the page, then click the arrows). You can also place the navigation bar on the top of your site horizontally if you wish, by clicking on the Change site layout button, then selecting Horizontal navigation bar. You can then delete all the pages listed in the left sidebar and set its width to zero, so that the navigation menu only appears horizontally across the top. 5