For a lot of students, young entrepreneurs and small business people getting a website built is a big task. They think that it will cost too much and it is not feasible for them. However, they don’t know that there are ways through which they can create a responsive website for free. They can create it for learning the purpose, for their personal use as well as for setting up a small business. For doing so, you need to use Google sites. It is one kind of free service provided by Google to create dynamic, responsive and interactive websites within few clicks.
The giant search engine offers this service to encourage people to bring their ideas and business online without worrying about the cost. For doing so, you just need to sign up on Google account, and in case you already have the account on Google, then you can use the same account credentials to use Google Sites.
Once you get on to Google Sites, you can start crafting a new website by following some necessary steps.
Selecting a name and address
Click on the Create button on the Site’s Dashboard for creating your Site and enter your Site’s name, which is appended automatically to your website’s URL without any spaces. Make sure once your website URL should be unique.
Template and Theme selection
Google Sites doesn’t give any default template so that you can design and setup everything as per your choice. You will find a list of popular templates and themes, and you can choose any of them and start working on it.
Editing the layout
Once you made your theme and template selection, remove the default layout and start rearranging all the website elements like sidebar, scrollbar, color etc.
Add up Pages
Click on ‘Create page‘ to add up new pages and set their position where you want to place them. In case you get confused after reading any instruction, then click on ‘Learn more’ to understand the whole process.
Add up Content
After this, you will see the WYSIWYG interface of Sites, which is used to add and edit content. Also, you will see a menu button to add multiple columns, insert tables, images etc. Basically, it gives you the functionality to provide a beautiful look and feel to your Site.
General website management
Now, you just need to repeat the previous steps till the time your website is completely ready. After this, you need to set and configure critical sites elements. So, click on the “Gears button” and go to Manage Site. Here you can change the name of the website and add a more detailed description.
Control Section
To control people’s access to your website, click on the Gears icon and go to “Manage Site” to give viewing and access permission. By default, anyone can view the new websites. If you want to change it, click on the “Change” link under ‘Who has access’ to restrict access to any specific URL of your website or to restrict the access of a particular list of people.
Website Tracking
You can track all the changes made to the website by clicking on the “Revision History” option given on the Gears icon. Now, you can click on the ‘view page listing’ link at the top to view changes on all the pages on your website.
So, following these steps, you can create a website using a Google account for free and use it either for leaning purpose or for running your own business.
