Google Sites Kinda Scared Me: Project Reflection #1

Step 1: the seemingly simple goal of creating my Google Site -- just the homepage.  I was confident I could do this easily because I have been using a Google Site for my grad class all semester and I have created multiple online sites for my own classes using Wikispaces and Nings.  I also use many other Google applications, from gmail to Google Documents/Forms/Presentations. How hard could it be to set up a basic Google Site? 

To be honest, I found the interface to be oddly not intuitive for me and, as a result, overwhelming.  I had to click on many tabs to find where to make the style changes I wanted to make.  Part of this is the vocabulary:  for example, what is the difference between a page background image versus a page wrapper background image?  Part of it is how they divide up the tabs: for example, why is background image under colors and fonts and not site layout?  Here is a look at my completed homepage and how I got there, including more than one goof on clicking site layout!

Step 2:  Exploring CSS coding within Google Sites made me see that I have indeed gotten my head around the layout of Google Sites (and I even used the site layout  tab this time!). I found a few helpful resources for understanding CSS coding within Google Sites: the color coding of what each CSS layer means was a great review for me here, this fourm exchange was fun to read just to see how people really get into this topic, and finally this FAQ page got me jumping right into my first CSS coding on my site ...