I finally took some time to create a website using Google Sites.  Google offers so many services that it takes me some time before I find the time to use certain extraneous services.  I’ve heard of Sites for some time, and in fact, recommended it to teachers in the past as a good tool for creating a web page.

I’m not the type of person who likes to create web sites on these services.  If I want to make a website, I want total control of the content.  I usually would use a content management service like Drupal or Mambo or WordPress and put it up on my server.  The ease of owning a domain name and installing it yourself makes it preferred, and it escapes design limitations and the abundance of advertising tied to free services.

Google Sites is as easy to use as Google Documents.  It allowed me to easily create a site with an address and a name, add and edit pages, upload images, create a navigation sidebar, and change the color scheme/theme, and share it with others.  I was creating a site as a favor to a family member who wanted to preserve his site from the soon-to-be-defunct GeoCities.  It was a simple matter of copy and paste, either as text or HTML from one site to the other.  I had to save the images to my desktop computer and reupload them.

It is impressive how easy it’s become to create web pages.  The downsides are: all pages on Sites will look similar and some features are limited or hard to find (including the ability to reorder the navigation side bar–I eventually found it buried in the settings option), and the different text formats like 2 or 3 columns didn’t format how I wanted.  It also took me five minutes to find the delete site option.  The problem with many of these free web design services is they provide limited functionality in terms of formatting and appearance, but are great for students, beginners to web design, and those with time or financial constraints.