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Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

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Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#101

Post by remify »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #99
moolcool wrote: post #55

I don't know why this is attracting so much hate here. It's a novel and useful idea. Sure, you're relying on Docs, but that's an established, mainline Google service which makes them money through their enterprise work stack (so I doubt it'll get Google Reader'd). If you were using Google's cloud, nobody in the comments would know or care. Sometimes HN is just negative for the sake of being negative. I think this is…

Google Docs might not go away but Google might charge for it. Or you will be locked out of Docs because you uploaded a video on YouTube featuring your toddler listening to copyrighted music. Wordpress is here to stay and relatively under your control

I mean it's not like migrating some pages will be hard anyway ...

I say it's a quick and easy way to put some things out there.

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#102

Post by amelius »

bachmeier wrote: post #83
moolcool wrote: post #55

I don't know why this is attracting so much hate here. It's a novel and useful idea. Sure, you're relying on Docs, but that's an established, mainline Google service which makes them money through their enterprise work stack (so I doubt it'll get Google Reader'd). If you were using Google's cloud, nobody in the comments would know or care. Sometimes HN is just negative for the sake of being negative. I think this is…

> I think this is a great solution for anyone who wants to throw some articles online without having to muck about with frameworks or the minutiae of managing a blog. Your comment might be right, but this sentence is puzzling. How does this require less minutiae than, say, Medium or tumblr?

Medium is the "YouTube" of text blogs, and may (soon) be in the same league of evilness. The point is to have a blog without a gatekeeper that controls who sees what. Using Google docs fulfills this requirement (at this moment).

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#103

Post by remify »

bad_user wrote: post #95

I maintain a blog built on static tools since 2009, which is older than most people's blogs I see on Hacker News: https://alexn.org Hosting is free if you host it on GitHub Pages. I have my own VPS on DigitalOcean. Maintenance of that node is insignificant though, as the machine auto-updates itself. And you don't need to do it if you're on GitHub or GitLab Pages or other similar services. The initial cost was a littl…

Now what if my 55 years old mother want to create a blog on her own ?

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#104

Post by mbel »

remify wrote: post #103
bad_user wrote: post #95

I maintain a blog built on static tools since 2009, which is older than most people's blogs I see on Hacker News: https://alexn.org Hosting is free if you host it on GitHub Pages. I have my own VPS on DigitalOcean. Maintenance of that node is insignificant though, as the machine auto-updates itself. And you don't need to do it if you're on GitHub or GitLab Pages or other similar services. The initial cost was a littl…

Now what if my 55 years old mother want to create a blog on her own ?

It's easy: she just needs to become a computer scientist.

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#105

Post by hjek »

patwalls wrote: post #49
smacktoward wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that non-technical people see these things completely differently than technical people do. Seen through the eyes of technical people like your average HN reader, Markdown is simple and lightweight. Seen through the eyes of a non-technical person, marking up text in any format (not just Markdown) looks indistinguishable from writing code , which is something they believe deep d…

This. For my blog that I mentioned in my top comment, I use Google Docs because I'm working with people that usually don't know Markdown (I'm interviewing e-commerce business owners). I need it to be as easy as possible for them to get the written interview done. From my experience, a Google doc is the easiest way to do this, and it allows for very familiar features when I ask them for edits or provide feedback in-do…

There are free/libre simple markdown editors[0] available that have the buttons and keybindings more similar to Word. Additionally, collaborative editors like Etherpad[1] don't use markdown either (and btw, neither does WP, of course) and will be entirely familiar to non-technical people.

> Basically, I'm trying to make as little friction as possible to getting the document complete.

I can see how it may be more frictionless for you to use Google Docs, and how this may be less work for you than for example installing and running your own Etherpad. But I think it's too grand a statement to say that "You Don't Need Wordpress" because people that don't want to give up their online freedom still do.

Maybe that's what's upsetting people about this project, it's grandiose title that's dismissing another successful free blogging platform? While I fell kinda bad about defending anything PHP, WordPress does have a lot of extensions and your solution couldn't replace WooCommerce or WPForms.

[0]: https://simplemde.com [1]: https://etherpad.net

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#106

Post by keypress »

ggregoire wrote: post #11
CJefferson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like good fun, but I'll be honest I find the name very insulting. I've had a wordpress website for 8 years. Is this going to work in 8 years? 6 months?

The name is inspired from You Don’t Need jQuery, You don’t Need MomentJS and so on.

Context context, always good to add context.

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#107

Post by bad_user »

remify wrote: post #103
bad_user wrote: post #95

I maintain a blog built on static tools since 2009, which is older than most people's blogs I see on Hacker News: https://alexn.org Hosting is free if you host it on GitHub Pages. I have my own VPS on DigitalOcean. Maintenance of that node is insignificant though, as the machine auto-updates itself. And you don't need to do it if you're on GitHub or GitLab Pages or other similar services. The initial cost was a littl…

Now what if my 55 years old mother want to create a blog on her own ?

Not to sound harsh, but I don't care about your 55 years old mother. What works for her will not work for me.

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#108

Post by moolcool »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #100
patwalls wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! That's a good point. People might crap on your idea because it relies on a Google product, but massive companies like Snapchat and Airbnb use Google Cloud. Obviously GDocs are a bit different but lots of businesses are built on top of Google products (e.g. Google Maps)

* And if they forgot that, Google just reminded them with massive price hikes and limits on free use https://www.mapsmarker.com/docs/misc/google-maps-tos-changes...

There's a big difference between a neat side hustle you made in 24 hours, and Uber. I genuinely don't understand why people on this website are so critical of things like this.

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#109

Post by kalleboo »

remify wrote: post #101
onetimemanytime wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Docs might not go away but Google might charge for it. Or you will be locked out of Docs because you uploaded a video on YouTube featuring your toddler listening to copyrighted music. Wordpress is here to stay and relatively under your control

I mean it's not like migrating some pages will be hard anyway ... I say it's a quick and easy way to put some things out there.

Only if you remembered to back them up before you got denied access.

That said now that's actually a concern to me. Anyone know of any decent automated google docs backup services?

Re: Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs

#110

Post by vehementi »

arikrak wrote: post #75

This looks like a great idea since Docs is both a good editor and a good way to collaborate. However I don't want to give access to my whole Drive to an unknown product, it would be good if it could just get access to one directory or the like.

Same, wanted to play around with this but I won't risk it
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