Using Google Sites for quick, free websites - music to my ears

As a Google groupie since I can't remember when, I've used many of their features — from Docs, to chat (so many different Google chat apps), to, of course, Gmail.

However, I never realized I’d been overlooking one fantastic feature: Google Sites. With Google Sites, you can build decent free websites. They don’t rival what you can create in WordPress or Squarespace, but they’re great for a simple one-off page. And, if you’d like, you can even connect a URL you already own to the page to create a seamless web experience.

I found this while helping a friend with an elaborate prank page, where he was good-naturedly ribbing his buddy about pool. For that project, the fact that it was free worked perfectly. This isn’t a page that’ll be viewed more than 5–10 times, so setting up hosting and maintenance seemed silly. (Yes, I understand the whole project is ridiculous.)

Working on that site made me realize that Sites are actually perfect for quick information or event pages—things where I’m not too concerned about a whole content funnel, blog, or regularly updated info. Though, with some effort, you can still build out more structure if you really want to.

For example, my second time using Sites was to create a guide for using lavalier mics in church settings—for both live sound and streaming.

To create that site I:

• Listed out my instructions in Drive

• Dropped them into Gemini and asked it to create the page with stylized HTML and CSS

• Pasted the code into Sites

• Spent about an hour on sizing and edits

Overall, I wouldn’t use Sites for clients needing a full web experience, but for an explainer page or elaborate ruse, they’re quite alright.