Make a Website Using Google Sites

Building your own website usually feels like hitting a brick wall the second things get technical. But it doesn't have to be that complicated. I find Google Sites super easy to use because it's simple, clean, and effective. In this Instructable, I’m going to walk you through the steps of making a Google Site, from turning a blank page into your own live site, along with a few interesting and helpful tweaks I found to make it look way more awesome.

(Make sure to view the screenshots/screen recordings I uploaded, as they definitely help provide further clarification to my steps.)

1. A computer or technology of your choice
2. A Google account

Go to sites.google.com. You can choose to either make a website using a template found in the template gallery, but most of the time it's best to start with a blank site, which is what I did.

You will then be led to a "Untitled Site" which only consists of a homepage and on that homepage, a banner for the header type and a blank title- "Your page title".

Before you get too far ahead, you'll want to decide on a theme for your entire website. On the right side, a section consisting of most of your tools you'll use to create the website will have three sections- "Insert", "Pages", and "Themes". Obviously, click on the "Themes".

The options for the website theme are either creating a custom theme or choosing one created by google. By choosing to create a custom theme, you will then be led to the first step- naming your theme and adding a logo/banner image. You can also add the banner image later, which I personally recommend. The next step will be choosing your colors. There are a few "Present colors" options, or you could specifically choose your own colors. The last step will be selecting your theme fonts- one for titles and headings and one for body text.

If you want more control over your site theme, I provided a screen recording showing a few things you may want to change/add to what you have. By simply clicking edit, you could also figure out these steps by yourself. The most important things to change will likely be found under: "Colors", "Text", "Navigation", and "Components".

We'll now focus on editing and creating pages. First, you'll want to name your site and homepage title (duh). By hovering over the header with your mouse, the screen will show options to change your background/header image, as well as the size of your header. Or, if you just don't want a header at all, you could delete it.

The next step will be adding more pages and subpages. By going to the "Pages" section and hovering over the "+" button, you'll have a few different options to choose from. The main option would be to create a new page, and after doing so you would be able to see it on your website template. By clicking on the overflow menu, you can see you have a few more options, including adding a subpage. I personally like hiding the subpages from navigation, so they can only be accessed via clicking on a link to that subpage.

I posted quite a few screenshots regarding the things you can do in the "Insert" section- so definitely check those out. Here are the basics concerning these options-

The text box is pretty self-explanatory. You get it.

By adding a content block, you get a certain amount of placeholders for pictures, videos, and anything else you want to upload. You also get a few text boxes. After typing whatever you want into these text boxes, going to the overflow menu for these can allow you to insert a link, either to somewhere else on the website or an entirely different URL- such as a link to a YT channel, Instructables profile, etc. By clicking on whatever you put inside the "upload" box, it then leads to a few more options, such as "Crop image" or "Uncrop image".

By scrolling down a little more, you find a few more helpful options. Spacers and dividers don't need further explanation, but I still uploaded screenshots of what they do in case anyone was wondering. "Collapsible groups " and "Table of contents" are optional, but not as important as buttons, placeholders, and image carousels.

By adding a button, Google Sites will ask for the name and link. By adding an image carousel... okay never mind, this is self-explanatory. You get the point. Placeholders are basically the same as the ones found in the "Content blocks" section, only without the text box. Of course, they can be cropped and changed in size.

After the website is all finished, it's time to publish it! The options at the top allow a preview of your website before publishing, which can be super helpful in between editing your website to see how it looks on different devices. The next option is "Share with others". If you want to allow family or friends to have access to edit this, you simply type in their contact and it should pop up. Almost all the time, your "General access" settings should be changed to how mine are above.

The last thing before publishing will be to check your settings. By downloading the screen recording I took, you will be able to see what you should be aware of. Of course, you could also just find out by yourself by going to the settings. Most importantly, you'll want your info icon (found in the viewer tools section) turned off.

Your website is now ready to publish! I recommend doing a final check to see if there is anything you want changed, and after that, go ahead and click publish. You will get to decide on a web address- although it's all under sites.google.com unless you buy a domain. Your site is now finished! Of course, the site can be updated and edited whenever, and after each update/edit you can publish it again.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully you can now quickly and easily put together a Google Site! Feel free to comment below if you have any further questions. Don't forget to check out my other projects and follow me for more! :)