Making a Website using Google Pages

Student Web Pages | Google Pages

First you need an account. Google wants you to use your gmail address as your login. What? Don't have one, well you'll need to get one in order to use Google Pages. Don't worry you never have to give it to anyone or use it for mail, but it is your passkey to all the other Google goodies (like blogger.com, Google sketchup [free 3-D rendering tool], customizing your iGoogle home screen w/ other options, etc.)

Once you register (PLEASE write down your gmail address and password, you are the only one who knows them!) login and begin. You'll need to name your site. Name it with your name please: "lisab.google.pages.com" is a clear informative web address, whereas, "imsohot.google.pages.com" is not. Use only your first name and last initial.

With Google pages you are composing your website directly online. No software to learn or own, no platform problems, no difference if you log in from school or home.

Start with clicking on "create new page", you'll have to name the page so think of what the page is for then name it appropriately. Some suggestions might be: lisahome; dayinlife; aboutme. Next, in the window you get click on "change look" and/or "change layout" (both in upper right corner of window) for choosing a template and the layout of the text and photos. You get a number of styles to choose from. I suggest you make your whole site using one template, not changing templates for each page. This makes your site much more professional looking.

Next you'll need text and photos. My suggestion is compose in Word. There is NO SPELL CHECK in Google Pages, so YOU are responsible to get this right from the get go. Plus if you screw up one of your pages you'll have your text saved on your computer at home or school, always good to have a back up.

Once you've played with the formatting tools on the page (text color, size, highlighting, indenting, etc) and are satisfied for the moment you can either "publish your page" or go back to the site manager. Either way your page is saved. If you publish it though then it is actually visible online once you give the URL (web address) to someone. We'll have a link to your homepage from the AACE site for family and our Chinese friends to access your work.

Navigation: you need to link all your pages to each other and it is easy. Once you have made them all on one type:

home | about me | day in my life | AACE home

This is the navigation bar. Note: the vertical line divider (not a forward slash, please) is found on your keyboard over the "enter" key, in cap mode.

The "home" item goes to your home page. Highlight that word, click on the "link" icon in the tools menu, and in the link window that opens click on "your pages" which will then show all your pages. If the link you are making goes somewhere else other than to pages in your site, say to a website you like, or to the AACE home link (http://www.aacexchange.org), then choose "web address" instead. "Your files" is if you wanted to link a PPT, .doc, or attach another file to be downloaded. And of course "email address" is just that, an email address link button where you can put one in.

Continue linking the other pages to the nav bar. Each page should have the whole navigation bar on both the top and bottom of the page. Once you fill in all the links you can just copy/paste the nav bar into place on each page (top and bottom remember, nothing more annoying than having to scroll all the way back up to the top of a long page to find out how to move along). So really you only have to make this bar once, if you wait until at least all your pages have been created (not finished, the website is a work in progress). Some people make blank pages with just titles on them and then do all the links right in the beginning, before they even add content, it's up to you.

A few tips:

Make a folder on your computer at home or in your school account called AACEweb and in it put all your text docs and the images you plan to use. Google Pages requires you upload the sized images to a folder on their server, but if they get corrupted or lost online you'll always have a backup.

You MUST SIZE your PHOTOS. I can't say this enough. At resize2email.com you can choose small, med. large, choose small. Digital cameras create HUGE photos, often 22"x32" in size, Google Pages cannot handle photos w/o reducing the size greatly. In resize2mail make yours 360x480 (portrait-vertical format) or 480x360 (landscape-horizontal format). What Google Pages does is only allow a certain size on their page, so it makes your image a thumbnail, but you can then click on the image and it will pop up the full size once it is a "published" as a web page. DO NOT put images directly from your camera on the page though, they will load way too slowly.

Keep your text simple and straight forward. This site is for our Chinese friends, not for your buddies. Make a different site for your friends, or use Facebook, MySpace, etc. but keep the AACE one fairly formal in tone.

Need help? My IM buddy name is lisabrux (put it in your list and when you see me online feel free to introduce yourself, tell me you're doing an AACE website, and ask any questions you might have). Email me at: lbrooks@tvhs.k12.vt.us for help any time.

Refer to:
http://gpc.tipstricks.googlepages.com/google_page_creator.html for serious help if you're trying to something tricky like adding an anchor, javascript, html, etc. These directions are for techies, not for the faint of heart (or techless).