Friday, August 31, 2007
Google Pages
A friend ask me today "how hard is it to make a one page site, really simple, with a contact form".
I hate this question.
The first page of any website is the hardest and most time-consuming. The other pages are easy - just copy and paste the content and format it within the template. But working out the layout, graphics, and then browser bugs on the first pages takes time. It has to be custom for branding purposes.
My friend just got certified as a LMT and wanted a virtual business card/brochure. I suggested he try Google Pages, which offers ad-free websites for Gmail users. Sure, the templates are rather generic but most are attractive enough. You have four different layouts to choose from (one, two, and three column). And there's a little WYSIWYG editor with a HTML option. The only thing I don't like about the editor is that isn't very strong on meaning and semantics. It has no option for <h1>, <h2>, <blockquote>, etc. At least you can edit the HTML directly, which I needed to do to get the content to show up exactly the way we wanted.
I worked with him on formatting the text, but overall he was very happy with how simple it was to set up.
