Hacks: Google Sites
It’s not for nothing that Google Sites is my preferred presentation tool. It’s so easy to arrange content, to drop content in with copy and paste. But have you seen some of the latest changes? Let’s take a look.
New Menu Section in Sites
If you work with Google Sites enough, you’ll realize that you can move pages around with ease. You can group them one under another to avoid the overwhelm of a long list of pages, but sometimes, you would have to create a blank page to mark the sections for organization.
Now, as an improvement, Google Sites added a “New menu section” to their list of options. Recently, they also added a “Full page embed” feature that wasn’t there a short time ago, and this feature gives several options for embedding different file types on a page.
The “New menu section” option appears when you hover over the “New page” icon.
The “New menu section” works as a placeholder, making it easy to move pages underneath it, and it doesn’t result in an empty page to mark the section.
In the screen capture shown right, you can see that “Gameboard” displays a different icon than a page.
Instead, it is an icon of overlapping boxes that signals a menu section. You can add subpages as well as hide them from navigation. A search of the site does reveal hidden pages, though.
Full Page Embed
The “New page” menu, makes it easy to embed a file, map, video, and more onto a page on a Google Site. When you hover over the “New page” icon and select the “Full page embed” option, you will be prompted to title your page. Once the page is created, you will see the option to “Add embed” or “Add from Drive.”
As indicated, the content fills the page once embedded. You can see an example below of an embedded YouTube video and a chart.
In the menu to the right of the page, you can see that you have several options for what you can embed, but you can only embed one item per page. Still, this makes for a powerful embed option.
New Theme Feature
Ever despaired of Google Sites’ pre-supplied themes? Now you have options. Launch the Create a Theme wizard, which appears under Themes, and you get options. You can tap on the plus symbol to create a theme or import a theme.
Tip #1 - Site Organization
Nested Levels of Content
The new Google Sites enjoys multiple levels of nesting. Create your overall hierarchy of pages, making those the top levels under which other pages will be placed.
Think of it as an outline you would use for an essay or paper.
I. Mini-Lessons
Accessible Learning
Engaged Learning....
Vocabulary
Let’s call each top level page with a page or more beneath it a “section.” Each section page title becomes a part of the website address. Long, cumbersome names with dashes and ampersands may present readability problems.
When naming your sections, keep the title to one word or compound word. In this way, you can keep your nested page addresses simple.
In this screenshot, you can see that “Mini-Lessons” is the section name or top level page. Beneath it are sub-pages.
When organizing a Google Sites page with many nested pages in sections, you have the option of keeping sections in alphabetical order. This makes sense. It facilitates your navigation through the ever-scrolling Pages list in new Google Sites.
However, don’t look for an “Alphabetize” button. You will have to maintain the alphabetical order of pages yourself. You can also, as shown in the image above, organize them for convenience sake.
Note that some section pages appear as pages with a corner turned down (viewable), while others are hidden from navigation (crossed out link). Let’s take a closer look at “Hide from Navigation.”
Tip #2 - Hide from Navigation
When working with lots of content, you need not show ALL the pages you have in a Google Sites. Instead of revealing every page, which results in long, unmanageable menu lists, only add the top level page of each section to your navigation bar.
You can do this by selecting “Hide from Navigation” to all pages that are not section pages (top level).
When you select the 3 dots that appear to the right of a page, you see the screen above. There are some useful options here that you can take advantage of.
Notice the 3 dots below. They offer several additional options worth exploring. Let's review them:
Make Home Page
Need to change your home page to reflect a conference or special event? You can use this option to set a particular page as your new temporary home page or “landing page.” This can be great when you want to encourage people to quickly find their way to your website. For example, if you go to http://tceamg.org, you will see my current home page. During a conference, I can set the home page to a tailored site (e.g. TCEA 2018 Convention). Visitors would see that page in lieu of my traditional page with my photo on it.
Make a Copy
Have you set up your Sites page the way you want it to look and now wish you could make it the “template” for your sub pages? You have two choices. If you have content on the page, duplicate page to mirror the content on your source page, then make small changes to customize the new page.
Properties
This will allow you to change/rename the name of a page, as well as set "Advanced" options. This Advanced option allows you to set a permanent name that designates the location (a.k.a. "custom path") of the page. Since naming is so important (the longer the page name, the longer the website address), you will want to rename a page once you duplicate it.
Add Subpage
The add sub page makes a copy of the section page (a.k.a top level page) and applies the banner image or color to the new sub page. This can be a time-saver, especially when you have an image banner for the title.
Show in Navigation
This option allows you to show or hide the visibility of the page in the Google Sites' navigation menu.
Delete
Remove the page from the Google Sites.
Tip #3 - Add New Content in Sections
As with any web page, remember to keep your images small in size. You can usually resize a picture, then take a screenshot to make it smaller. On Windows, I like to use PixResizer program to get images down to quick loading size.
Ready to add content to your new Google Sites page? The symbol with the page and plus sign make adding content easy. While I would rather duplicate a page or create a sub page since it places the page in your hierarchy of pages, you can use the add page symbol.
The add page symbol will place your new page at the bottom; then you will need to drag it up to place it in the right section. To save time, add content in the appropriate section.
Avoid scrolling to find pages to link to. Minimize scrolling when trying to link to a page at the bottom of your list of pages. Temporarily move the page/section to the top of the pack, below the Home page. This eliminates scrolling through all the other content in your Sites website without changing the website address for that section or nested pages. When done, move the section/page back.
More Suggestions
Create a standard banner for your sections. This assists visitors to a site to recognize their location in a section. For example, I have a standard image that I use for all my Mini-Lesson pages. These pages provide step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish a task.
Embed content from other sites. Have a video? Put it on YouTube or Google Drive, then paste the link while viewing the page. This will make adding video content easy. Use Padlet? Take a snapshot of your Padlet and then link the image, as well as referring text, to the Padlet.
Copy-and-paste content across Sites. You can copy-and-paste content from one new Sites to another in sections. The trick to this is ensuring the site has been shared with you. If not, you will encounter permission errors with images (image will fail to upload).
Copy Your Google Sites One Section at a Time
This makes copying entire sections (which appear highlighted in blue when selected, as shown above) of a Google Sites (Google Suites for Education) to a personal Google Sites (or vice versa) an easy process.
Tip #4 - Embedding HTML Content
Embedding content into a page on the New Google Sites was a bit of a challenge. Now, you can paste embedded code into a Google Sites page. You can drop YouTube videos, Vimeo videos, and other content that features embedded codes. For example, let’s say you have a Microsoft Sway creation you want to embed on a Google Sites page.
Steps to Follow
Locate the embed code on the source site (e.g. Padlet, YouTube, Sway, Vimeo).
Copy the embed code.
Open the Google Sites page.
Click on the Insert when in Page Edit mode.
Click on the Embed option, which now features a place to paste the website address (URL) or embed code.
Paste the embed code from the source site.
Tip #5 - Adding Images
Adding pictures and images to a Google Sites page remains easy. You need only take advantage of the options shown right:
You can Copy-n-paste content into your new Google Sites page. When working with Chrome or Firefox browsers, you can right-click and then copy-and-paste an image from anywhere on a web page (for example, from this list of twenty-five copyright-free image sites).
All images are stored in your Google Drive and associated with your Sites website. Of course, you can always just place images in your Google Drive or search Google:
Tip #6 - Time-Saving Tips
