In recent years Google, thanks to its dedicated tool, has allowed many people, even the most inexperienced beginners, to create a basic website that can also be used as a commercial or professional portal. The Google Sites application, which allows you to open a site for free and without writing programming code, has received a recent update that has renewed its functionality by improving a lot and returning to being a powerful and modern tool, after years in which it seemed almost destined to close.
I had already written a guide about Google Sites, noting how it was also possible to use it to create commercial and professional sites thanks above all to its integration with G Suite, i.e. the dashboard of web app dedicated to companies that includes a custom domain, the possibility of creating and manage email accounts and have a cloud space to store files.
Google however allows everyone to create sites with its platform, even for free, without code and without the need to register a custom domain, using all its tools and thus creating a site complete with everything you need, in a super easy way.
To begin with, you can open the Google Sites app and log in through your personal Google account to create a new online project.
The interface is all translated into Italian, so just press the Create button to start and exploit the potential of the new version of Sites.
What will then be the first page of the site is immediately displayed with the possibility of giving a title to the site (by pressing at the top left), writing a title of the page and then inserting content that can be made of text, images and embedded elements coming from from other Google apps.
Any written text can be formatted as you prefer, colored or placed on a background.
You can also create bulleted or numbered lists in a simple way and then create navigation bars (even if the navigation bar appears automatically at the top when adding new pages) and can be customized by going over it with the mouse and then pressing the gear button ).
In particular, it is possible to insert Maps, videos from Youtube, calendars, graphics, documents, spreadsheets and presentations saved in Google Drive and other files to be downloaded by visitors.
To insert text boxes, images and files into the site, you can use the sidebar on the right in the Insert tab.
The Themes tab, on the other hand, allows you to choose the site's graphics, its design.
The Pages tab allows you to add other pages to the site, other articles or whatever you want, which can then be called up via links from the main home page, as is done when building a website.
For each page you can also choose whether to make it accessible from the navigation bar or to keep it hidden even if online.
Each page, then, can be published by pressing the Publish button, also choosing the URL, that is the address that can be written on the browser to open it.
NOTE: If you want a custom domain you need to pay for a subscription to G Suite and then change the site address from there (see guide).
Taking into account what it offers, G Suite can say that it costs quite little (40 Euros per year or 4 Euros per month).
Returning to the new Google Sites, there are some new features included in the most recent version that make it absolutely a valid choice.
1) You can add Google Analytics to get all the statistics of the site and know how many visit it and how.
To add Google Analytics just press on the button with three dots and then on Site analysis.
You will then be asked to write the tracking ID of the site, which can be obtained by logging into the Google Analytics site with the same account used on Sites.
2) Forms can be added to receive subscriptions or registrations, for surveys, for gathering information thanks to the integration with Google Modules, which I had already introduced and described in another post.
Then create a new module from Google Modules, then open Google Sites, scroll the column on the right downwards and press Modules to insert it in the site.
3) A great feature of Google Sites is the ability to be able to work on a new site in multiple people .
You can then add editors by pressing the button with the little man you see at the top next to the public button.
The addition of the editor can be done so that each person indicated (through his email address at the bottom of the box that opens) can be an administrator or depriving the others of the possibility of making changes and publishing.
4) Embed videos from YouTube so that the videos are directly visible on our website.
5) Check that the site is also optimized for smartphones and mobile phones .
This is perhaps the best news of Google Sites, which now automatically optimizes each site created so that it is also clearly visible on mobile phones.
To check if the site is responsive and perfectly rendered even on smartphones, you must use the Preview button and then, at the bottom right, press the mobile phone icons vertically or horizontally and check that you see well.
Google Sites therefore remains still in 2017 and in the future an excellent Site Builder, easy and complete with the most important and fundamental functions.
Considering that it is Google, there is not even to waste time with SEO and promotion for the search engine, given that the sites are, from a technical point of view (obviously then the contents make the difference) already optimized.
For a complete guide on Google Sites you can read the Steegle site, the most complete that can be found.
The limits of the new Google Sites are, for now, two: it is not possible to add Adsense or other advertising and you cannot edit the HTML code or even add portions of code like gadgets, which is instead possible in the classic version of Sites.
So if you want to create a blog with advertising using a Google service, you must use Blogger .
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