Designing a Website

Is Google Sites good for you?

Are you good with a free, clean website that is easy to build and has built-in security (SSL certificates)? Do you mind having a website name that includes sites.google.com/name? Then Google Sites might be for you.

Or you may want to add features that are currently not available on Google Sites. You can't: format text with colour or in many sizes; need control over meta descriptions or search engine optimization; monitize or insert ads in any way; then maybe you want to consider a more robust website builder like Wix or Weebly or even Wordpress.

Advice for Designing your Class Site

  1. Who is your target audience? Students? Other teachers? Job hunting?

  2. Who will own your your site? Will it be on your personal plan (portable) or within your school domain? Will it be for resources, a blog or other?

  3. Plan it on paper, first. What information do you want to share? How will you organize it? What will be the main pages, the sub-pages, the add-ons, content? Before you hit Create, work out the navigation and details.

  4. What name will you use? Is it easy to remember and type? Do you want to register your own domain or are you fine with a sites.google.com subdomaint?

  5. Learn the settings for your program. Do you want your site private and only within a school setting? Do you want to share with the world? Who will get editing privileges? Set this up first, before your click Publish so you confine who can actually change your site.

  6. Choose a Theme. In Google Sites this is rather limited. If you need a simple, clean site, Google Sites will give it to you. One workaround is using different sections or blank textboxes and changing the theme for that box.

  7. Design a Logo. Design it with different sizes. What is your vision for the site?

  8. Start building!

Designing for Accessibility

Accessibility issues should be considered by anyone designing a website. The advice here is also just good design.

The designers have shared these under a Creative Commons license which allows everyone to share, use, and build upon these poster, not to be used commercially and to keep the attributions.