Whether you’re a novice or expert web developer, you can make your content go live on the internet with minimum expenses using Google Workspace apps.
Related:Easy Way to choose perfect domain name for a blog
The Google apps integrate easily with one another to reduce the developer’s effort while still bringing code, content, and creativity together in one place. Moreover, there’s a good chance your team or client will be familiar with Google Workspace since most apps are available for free.
Google Workspace tips for web development in 2022
1. Draft and share technical specifications
Developing a comprehensive website specifications document is essential for any web development project. Give Google Docs a try to create technical documents such as this. When you’re planning a new website, use Docs to draft all your technical specs. Then, share the specs with your team for feedback so everyone agrees on what needs to be built.
Google Docs is a robust word processing app from Google Workspace that lets you easily format the document the way you want with its elaborate toolbar. You can then share a secure link with the client for feedback in just a few clicks.
You also don’t have to worry about version control since Docs saves all changes in real-time, and you can revert to an older version of a document in a flash.
You can also supplement the document with content from Google Slides to showcase graphics for front-end functionalities like mega menus, buttons, logos, services and products, and so on. It’s quick and easy to integrate Google Slides into Google Docs via the copy-paste command.
2. Store and Aarchive Files in One Place
Website content like marketing copies, website texts, images, videos, and animations is sensitive data.
Many web developers invest a lot in specialized tools for content management before and after making the website live. Google Drive is a free or low-cost option.
You can create a dedicated Google email for a specific web development project to use the entire 15GB free drive space for content safe-keeping. Alternatively, you can create Shared Drives if you’ve got a Google Drive subscription.
Google Drive also offers straightforward file sharing with external or internal collaborators and personalized content access like View, Comment, and Edit, so you can have full control over data integrity.
3. Create Useful Dynamic Websites
If you want to increase website traffic dramatically, you should offer personalized content through your website. For content personalization, you need to know more about the users visiting your site. This is one reason why professional websites let their users log in using a user ID or email and password.
Whether you’re setting up an intranet for your company, a project website for your team, or a portal for customers, you can create websites using Sites. It’s easy to insert documents, spreadsheets, calendars, and more without complex development work because Sites is integrated with other Google products. If your site is public, you can increase site traffic with Google My Business.
The web content the user sees changes automatically according to their profile, while the general website foundation remains the same. Developing a dynamic website capable of this functionality requires advanced tools that can automatically scale up depending on footfall.
To create a dynamic website, you can leverage Google App Engine and Google Cloud tools like Cloud Run. Google Cloud web hosting also helps you develop new features without affecting the live site through revision control.
4. Make your website more engaging and impactful
Creating a stunning and effective website isn’t expensive or cumbersome when you use Google Sites. You can use Sites to create an online portfolio, project status intranet, or a portal to your freelance gig with drag-and-drop website building.
Websites compete with one another for visitors, so making your site stand out is important to increase web traffic. With Sites, you can start with a strong visual style by adding colorful images, contrasting themes, and font styles. Increase interactivity by adding features, such as calendars, maps, or YouTube videos. Then, help people find your site in search results by boosting search engine optimization (SEO).
Google Sites integrates with other Google apps, so you can add various elements to your websites like calendars, documents, spreadsheets, maps, or YouTube videos. You can further modify the website by adding colorful themes, infographics, photographs, and designer fonts.
Try linking the Google Site to your Google My Business profile to collect website analytics. Website traffic data lets you plan your future actions depending on what you want to achieve with your portal.
5. Web Development Project Tracking
Premium and dedicated project management apps only increase web development costs and require additional inputs. Instead, you can manage the project cost-effectively using Google apps like Sheets and Gmail.
On Gmail, you can create group tasks using the Tasks add-on located in the right-side panel. Group Tasks is currently available through a Google Workspace subscription. The Tasks add-on of Gmail lets you create, assign, modify, and complete any tasks for the entire project team.
For every assigned task, there’ll be a new email notification. Team members can add their own tasks to a personal or shared Google Calendar app by accessing that email. Alternatively, you can use the Schedule template in Sheets for free to distribute tasks within the team.
Once you’ve assigned the tasks, use any freely available Google Sheets templates like Project tracking or Project timeline for project progress tracking.
6. Collect Feedback From Site Visitors
Google Forms and Google Analytics let you optimize your website depending on the audience’s interest.
Google Analytics mainly analyzes the user’s interaction with your website and offers you key insights like user demographics, browsers, or devices. However, Google Analytics comes with a learning curve and will likely require some practice.
An easier alternative is Google Forms, and you can effortlessly integrate it into your website’s code. If you’re using Google Sites or Blogger, Google Forms integration only takes a few clicks.
Develop Websites Faster With Google Workspace
You might be using Google Sites or Blogger to create a freelancing portfolio or pursue a blogging hobby. On the other hand, you also have Adobe Dreamweaver or Figma to create professional websites for your clients.
Whichever route you choose, you’ll have to manage content, code, tasks, and even communicate with your team or clients. Utilize the tools we mention in this article for appropriate scenarios and simplify your web development project with Google Workspace apps.
How to create a website using Google sites
When creating a website using Google Sites, there are certain steps that you must follow. These are listed below.
1. Create a Google Account
If you already have a Google account, you can skip this step. However, if you don’t have an existing account or wish to create a new account, navigate to https://accounts.google.com and click on “Create Account.”
You must either provide an existing email address, or you can set up a Gmail account, which we recommend as it makes the entire process smoother. Provide your recovery information ― in case you forget your password ― and you should be ready to go.
Click on the Google apps icon on the upper-right ― it looks like a small grid of nine circles ― next to the gear
Then, choose “Sites.” If you don’t see it, click on “More from Google,” click on “Browse all products,” and choose “Sites” from the list
2. Choose a Template
Now, you want to either choose an existing template for your site, or you can start with a blank canvas.
3. Choose a Theme
Next, you want to choose a theme for your site. (Note: you can always change the template later on if you don’t like what you first chose, but it helps to start with something that looks good to you.)
Note the menu on the right. You can choose any number of layouts for your page by clicking on the Layouts section. You can also add a wide number of different interfaces to your website’s main page, including:
- Text boxes
- Images
- Code embedding
- Resources from your Google Drive
4. Edit Text & Images
You will discover that every section of the page is editable, so you can add text wherever you like. Enter your website’s name and add some basic text on the screen. Change Layout or Design by using the widgets on the right.
You can change the background image by hovering over it and choosing “Change Image” and then you have a choice of either uploading a brand new image or selecting one from your Google Drive. Google also provides a selection of free images that you can use right away.
5. Change Your Layout or Background
Here, you can change your selection. You can also choose to duplicate the selection or delete it using the other icons that appear.
One thing you may want to do is to experiment a little. Almost every item on the page has an option that can be changed by hovering over it. For instance, you may see a small gear icon on the upper left of your page.
6. Add Widgets
You may realize that you can directly embed any content that Google provides into your pages. You can add a wide number of widgets from Google by choosing these from the menu on the right. These include:
- Collapsible groups, also called “Accordions”
- Table of contents
- Image Carousel
- Buttons
- Dividers
- Placeholders
- YouTube embedding capability
- Calendar
- Map
- Docs
- Slides
- Sheets
- Forms
- Charts
7. Create More Pages
Any site on the internet worth looking at typically has more than one page. You can add an unlimited number of new pages to your site using Google Sites easily. From the menu on the right, choose “Pages.”
Here, you can see a listing of all of the pages currently on your site. To add a new page, simply click on the large plus (“+”) button on the bottom right. You can add the name of your page and hit “Done.” This creates a new blank page using your default template.
8. Publish Your Website
Once you have completed your site to the level where you wish it to appear to the public, you want to publish it. To do this, click on the blue “Publish” button on the top right of your screen.
The first time you do this, you’ll be prompted to enter a unique folder name where your site will exist. For instance, if you were to name your website “A3TechWorld” it would become accessible at sites.google.com/view/a3techworld. (Note: this must be unique so that it has a name that’s different from any other Google website.)
9. Custom Domain
Of course, you’ll most likely want to create a custom domain for your website. To do this, you must purchase a name. You can either purchase this from a third-party supplier, or you can purchase one directly through Google.
Related:Buy a Domain Name in Google Domains- How to do it
Getting a domain from Google is likely the easiest way and about $1 per month, but you can choose to do this through another company. If you choose to purchase a domain from an independent company, you need to configure the domain host to point to ghs.googlehosted.com. To set up your domain at any point, click on the settings as described above, and choose “Custom Domains”
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