Easy Websites with Google Domains

Another year has rolled by us and you still don’t have a website? Why? Too hard? Too techie? Too expensive? Regardless of the excuse, having your own website can give you the edge over the competition when trying to land a dream job or advance your personal brand. Maybe you have a job interview this Friday and your prospective employer would like to see samples of your work. Yikes! There are several “easy” ways to get started, but some of those come with several pricey strings attached. No worries, Google once again, has simplified the process of getting your own domain and website costing you as little as $12 a year. On this last article for 2018, I’m leaving you with the goods to get your own blog or website running in minutes and show the world what you can do.

Website hosting 101

Before we dive into the practical pieces of creating your first website, let’s clarify some key definitions.

Website

A collection of web pages usually hosted in the World Wide Web (what we now call the Interweb).

Webpage

A web document i.e. a Home page on a website

Website host

A service provider that hosts your website on their servers i.e. big fancy, fast computers that give stuff to the Interweb.

Web domain

The name by which users can find your site without having to remember an IP address i.e. mywebsite.com instead of 10.134.234.54.678

Website vs Blog

Many people get confused with having a website versus having a blog. We already defined what is a website, but what’s blog? “Blog” is a short name for weblog, a type of website specifically designed to capture articles and time-stamped entries. A blog can be part of a website, but not the other way around. Blogs are really helpful if you want to create a journal of your work or ideas. Next, we’ll breakdown the process of getting each of these.

Blog site with Blogger

Blogger is a free blog app owned by Google and gives you an easy way to write articles and post them in minutes. The best part is you can go directly to Blogger.com and start your free blog without purchasing a domain. However, this limits your ability to have your own domain and separate website. A neat feature of using Google owned apps is the integration with your other Google apps i.e. Photos, Docs, Drive, etc. I highly recommend starting with Blogger if you are a first timer to web authoring. The image below is a screenshot of my Artikulatorz blog with a custom domain.

Websites with Google Sites

You can make websites at home from scratch, but that takes at least good working knowledge of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) coding. Google has Google Sites, a free app that makes web design as easy as writing a Google doc. Just like Blogger, this is a free app and it gives you a preset domain name that can be published on the Web. You can also integrate your Google site with your custom Google domain for a better user experience. Below is a sample of a quick sample website I created with Google Sites.

Getting your custom domain

Having a custom domain is the best route for personalizing your presence on the Web. It also gives you the opportunity to have custom email addresses based on your domain. Before getting your custom domain, think long and hard about the purpose of your site. This will help you decide on the best domain type to use. For example; a for-profit business should use .com, .biz or any other business variant. A non-profit should use .org. There is a long list of domain types, so make sure you do your research on this.

Now that you’ve thought about your domain name, go search for and get it at Google Domains. Keep in mind that your chosen name may be already taken, as in eLearning.com or even your first + lastname.info, etc. If your chosen name is not available, try different variations or different names until you find an available one. Depending on your desired domain name, the cost can vary between $12 and $30 or thousands more per year. Once you find an available domain (yay!), sign up and pay for it. Now that you own it, check out the resources below to link/integrate your custom domain with your website or blog. In addition to the free options discussed here, Google Domains integrates with the most popular web authoring tools like Wix.com, Weebly, Wordpress and Square Space among others.

Google Sites

Blogger

Get Started with Google Domains

Google Domains

Wrap up

This article was meant as your starting guide into web authoring and getting your first website or blog published. I can't explain in one article how important web design has been in my career, but you can learn these and other options in my Web Design for Learning Professionals session at ATDTK 2019.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!