Projects: Google Sites Coverpage and Navigation

Here is some information about the coverpage of a website built using the new Google Sites, and also about the navigation.

Google Sites Coverpage

The Google Sites coverpage is the page you first created, and it is the page your visitors will see first. You can edit that coverpage as your project takes shape, giving people information about your project. Depending on whether you are doing a Storybook or a Portfolio project, here are some of the items you might want to include on your coverpage:

• a title for your project in the banner space
• an image in the banner space (more about banner images)
• your name (optional)
• a link to your blog Comment Wall or a link to your blog
• Storybook: a blurb or a tagline to draw them into the Introduction
• Portfolio: a blurb for each story, giving your readers a sense of the contents
• image(s) or an image collage in the body of the page

You can browse through previous Google Sites here: Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics. I also used Google Sites to create the reading anthology for Myth-Folklore and for Indian Epics that you read back in Week 2. As you look at other people's sites this semester, you can get ideas to use for your own site.

Google Sites Navigation

The navigation for Google Sites defaults to a horizontal navigation menu across the top of the page that updates automatically whenever you add a new page. If you like that system, you don't have to do anything at all. Just choose your page names carefully (shorter is better!), and your site navigation should take care of itself.

To rearrange pages, just go to the Pages tab in the right-hand menu panel, and then you can drag-and-drop the pages into whatever order you prefer. That is also where you can change the name of the page that appears in the editing menu; click on the three dots to open the page editing options, and then choose "rename page." This will not change the page title that appears on the banner; it will only change the name of the page in the navigation menu.

If you want to hide pages from the navigation menu, you can do that (for example, if you are doing a "choose-your-own-adventure" type of site where you want to create manual navigation links). To hide a page, just go to the Pages tab in the right-hand menu panel, and then click on the three dots to open up the editing options for that page. You will see that "hide page from site" is one of the options.