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

youdontneedwp.com

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

#31

Post by davio »

bigethan wrote: post #23
patwalls wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow I've never seen that. Pretty cool. After building this project I was thinking about a similar project where you could build a straight up website with Google Docs. Since Google's HTML export is pretty sophisticated (it also converts charts/shapes/etc) to HTML, it could work! Almost a throwback to that Microsoft product? Can't remember the name..

FrontPage! Good memories...

We were pretty impressed with ourselves when we replaced all of our corporate intranet sites created in FrontPage and Site Server with SharePoint.

Not really sure if justice was served at this point.

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

#32

Post by l_t »

patwalls wrote: post #2

Hey HN, In my opinion, platforms like WordPress can feel bloated or be intimidating to new users. For this reason, I wanted to build a blogging platform on top of Google Docs. I actually run my own blog as a side project, and I use GDocs religiously because of its excellent collaboration and sharing features. When I’m collaborating with dozens of writers, it’s convenient to be able to use a product that everyone is f…

It seems like YDNW is like a CMS that uses Google Drive as the "backend"/admin UI.

Personally, I see the benefits to using GDrive as the backend, but instead of having to host a server, I would rather be able to run a static site generator that exports my GDrive folder into some HTML that I can push to a free/cheap hosting provider. Is that something you've considered?

Static site generation would also obviate the concern that Google could "delete your blog" -- at worst, they could delete the source documents, but the published blog would be unaffected.

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

#33

Post by pavel_lishin »

miguelmota wrote: post #16

You don't need Google Docs either. Seems like a terrible decision since Google is known for randomly shutting down services and updating their terms of use at any point. It's a nice proof of concept but I'd stick with WordPress or a static site generator

Google Docs is probably _reasonably_ safe; it's used by a lot of Google's business users, and has no clear internal competitor anxious to murder it. (As far as I know, anyway.)

I'd say that Docs is as safe as YouTube or Gmail. Sure, you might get locked out of your account with no recourse, but the offering itself isn't likely to go away.

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

#34

Post by patwalls »

hjek wrote: post #30
ladybro wrote: post #6

Enjoyed watching the idea-to-launch process on Twitter and Twitch. Nice work, Pat!

It got too a bit too meta for me after watching 10 minutes screencast of the author posting about this on Reddit. Perhaps I am not the target audience for Twitch-style videos.

Ah man sorry that was just the beginning to get the ball rolling on the stream.

There's a recording on Twitch if you wanna skim through it (I linked to it in my top comment). Cheers

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

#35

Post by Bekwnn »

miguelmota wrote: post #16

You don't need Google Docs either. Seems like a terrible decision since Google is known for randomly shutting down services and updating their terms of use at any point. It's a nice proof of concept but I'd stick with WordPress or a static site generator

Setting a site up with Jekyll took less than a weekend, and I'm a C++/games programmer with next to zero web experience.

If you want a blog I don't know why you would go with anything but starting with a static site generator and building on top of that.

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

#36

Post by smacktoward »

miguelmota wrote: post #16

You don't need Google Docs either. Seems like a terrible decision since Google is known for randomly shutting down services and updating their terms of use at any point. It's a nice proof of concept but I'd stick with WordPress or a static site generator

Most static site generators require authors to learn something like Markdown in order to publish, which is a much bigger hurdle for non-technical people than technical people generally appreciate. Google Docs at least provides a WYSIWYG-ish interface many people will already be familiar with, and those that aren't won't find as forbidding.

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

#37

Post by notriddle »

smacktoward wrote: post #36
miguelmota wrote: post #16

You don't need Google Docs either. Seems like a terrible decision since Google is known for randomly shutting down services and updating their terms of use at any point. It's a nice proof of concept but I'd stick with WordPress or a static site generator

Most static site generators require authors to learn something like Markdown in order to publish, which is a much bigger hurdle for non-technical people than technical people generally appreciate. Google Docs at least provides a WYSIWYG-ish interface many people will already be familiar with, and those that aren't won't find as forbidding.

https://cloudcannon.com/

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

#38

Post by mort96 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #33
miguelmota wrote: post #16

You don't need Google Docs either. Seems like a terrible decision since Google is known for randomly shutting down services and updating their terms of use at any point. It's a nice proof of concept but I'd stick with WordPress or a static site generator

Google Docs is probably _reasonably_ safe; it's used by a lot of Google's business users, and has no clear internal competitor anxious to murder it. (As far as I know, anyway.) I'd say that Docs is as safe as YouTube or Gmail. Sure, you might get locked out of your account with no recourse, but the offering itself isn't likely to go away.

I thought Inbox was reasonably safe. After all, it's part of their e-mail offering, right?

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

#39

Post by ashelmire »

CJefferson wrote: post #5
patwalls wrote: post #2

Hey HN, In my opinion, platforms like WordPress can feel bloated or be intimidating to new users. For this reason, I wanted to build a blogging platform on top of Google Docs. I actually run my own blog as a side project, and I use GDocs religiously because of its excellent collaboration and sharing features. When I’m collaborating with dozens of writers, it’s convenient to be able to use a product that everyone is f…

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?

You don't need a lot of things in your life; you shouldn't get insulted by people saying so.

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

#40

Post by detaro »

The name seems weird. There's tons of blogging systems that aren't Wordpress, presumably your product is interesting for many of their users too, while not being interesting for many Wordpress users due to not matching Wordpress' capabilities.

At least your landing page actually talks about what makes your thing good, I've seen worse examples of promotion which then also spend a large percentage of their space talking about their competitors.

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