Google Sites Tutorial - Background and Favicon Design

The latest video tutorial for Google Sites web design.  Learn how to design a background using GIMP, a free photoshop-like application that has been of tremendous use to me.  There was so much good information that I had to split this into two parts.  I had some mistakes while working with GIMP because I'm still a novice to be honest, but hey we all learn from mistakes.

Part 1

Part 2

Google Sites Tip - Favicon

Definition: A favicon is the icon that is displayed in browser tabs, bookmarks, etc.

Google Sites allows the uploading of a custom favicon.  The favicon will be displayed for all pages of the site and is one of the simple things that makes your site more credible.

To make and upload a favicon is simple.  First of all, get the free graphics and photoshop-like program GIMP.  It is an essential program for web designers like myself.  I use it for all my graphics.

•  Open GIMP
• Create 'New'
• Specify a 32x32 pixel canvas
• Create your symbol/icon
• Save and name as favicon.ico, choose the 32 bpp option
• In your Google Site go to Manage Site > Attachments
• Click Upload and select your favicon.ico file

It's that easy!  Enjoy your new favicon and differentiate yourself from the typical Google Sites crowd.

That Favicon is Boring Anyway

Tip - The Small Things

Even BIG professional web designers miss some basic things in Google site powered professional  website.
Some of them are:

1. Favicon:   Making a favicon and upload in Google sites is very simple. That gives you the personalised look.  That’s not very tough, right?... Go to favicon.cc and just make one favicon and upload it in Google site's attachments. (Ha ha, I know, most of them are aware of it, but even they are not doing it.).
2. Site header/ Background/ Wrapper images:   Some plain Background images are always not necessary too BIG, like this.

 

           You can make a header like this, instead of above.

    

  and make it repeat horizontally.   So we can reduce the size, and web page will load faster.

3. Logo:   It’s always nice to put a logo in separately uploaded as logo ( Site layout> Height: Use theme default (change logo)). So that, It’ll clickable to homepage. You can make a .png image with background as transparent.

 
See the sample site.