Earlier quoted context omitted.
What questions?
I've been trying to figure out how to sort based on row value...
No sorting or pagination yet. Thanks for the feature request!
Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#12I briefly wondered how to get push notifications from a Google spreadsheet, to update a website. My guess is they do it by getting email notifications: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/91588?hl=en
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#13I wish this landing page wasn't so sparse. Lots of questions unanswered.
What questions?
Well for one, I'm assuming the frontend is all javascript? Am I dependent on a 3rd party service? Are there some examples of how it looks / behaves on the frontend? Is it stable? Is that form submission code adding rows to the spreadsheet? Does it depend on the spreadsheet being a certain format? What about multiple tabs? Does it need to oauth a google account? So on and so forth
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#14I built a site for a restaurant and use a Google Spreadsheet as the back-end for menu data. Whenever they have a change to make, they modify the spreadsheet, and the updates are instantly live on the site. They like it because they're very non-technical people, but totally get spreadsheets. I like it because there's version-control on any changes to the spreadsheet, so tracking updates is easy. Everything is cached i…
> They like it because they're very non-technical people, but totally get spreadsheets.
My experience matches this. About a year ago I rigged up Google Spreadsheets as a data source for Middleman in order to streamline content updates from the client throughout development. I learned the hard way to use fuzzy matching when correlating client-editable record names between data sources, but it otherwise worked well for both of us.
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#15I built a site for a restaurant and use a Google Spreadsheet as the back-end for menu data. Whenever they have a change to make, they modify the spreadsheet, and the updates are instantly live on the site. They like it because they're very non-technical people, but totally get spreadsheets. I like it because there's version-control on any changes to the spreadsheet, so tracking updates is easy. Everything is cached i…
Agreed. We also use Spreadsheet as a zero-code backoffice interface for data entry in enterprise companies and they love it. You can even embed specific sheets on your website if you want, so they don't even have to leave the site.
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#16I've been tinkering with a variant of the same thing at Cloudstitch.io and will be presenting a paper about spreadsheet-backed web apps in UIST 2014 [1] (an HCI research conference).
Happy to give anyone an account if you'd like to beta test.
Also, Brace.io folks -- great stuff. we should chat :)
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#17I briefly wondered how to get push notifications from a Google spreadsheet, to update a website. My guess is they do it by getting email notifications: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/91588?hl=en
Or maybe they just use push notifications?
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#18I've done something a bit similar on Lump.co, but I'm using Workflowy as a CMS there instead of Google Docs.
I basically shove whatever random lists of things I need to manage into a shared Workflowy list and then point some server-side PHP at it. It has some crude memcache support and conventions for formatting the content and stuff.
It's handy because it makes it really easy to manage those "extra things" that most people don't have time to model in a CMS: sidebar links, footer text, meta descriptions, etc. If something requires a more functional UI or deeper forms of manipulation, I'll build whatever custom admin UI I need.
Plus, I'm already in Workflowy 24x7 anyway, so it makes updating my site a breeze.
At least until Workflowy changes their internal API endpoints, which will break everything. :)
If anyone wants to know more I'd love to talk about it or share the code.
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#19I don't see myself using something like this under any circumstances. I would just make my own database and call it myself. It's not really a static site once you have dynamic content on it.
I am mostly of the same opinion as you are, but really what they are offering is an easy way to expose your data source as a service, and to provide a simple already established user interface over that data source.
So it does have its place but probably has a limited sweet spot. Is your end user already familiar with spreadsheets, possibly might want to view/edit the data in bulk, not going to pay you to build ur own editor over the data, not really that concerned about performance on a large scale? Then this might be a good solution for them.... Its basically MS Access in the cloud...
Re: Use Google Spreadsheets as a CMS
#20I don't see myself using something like this under any circumstances. I would just make my own database and call it myself. It's not really a static site once you have dynamic content on it.
I am mostly of the same opinion as you are, but really what they are offering is an easy way to expose your data source as a service, and to provide a simple already established user interface over that data source. So it does have its place but probably has a limited sweet spot. Is your end user already familiar with spreadsheets, possibly might want to view/edit the data in bulk, not going to pay you to build ur ow…
I agree with you in that it's not a bad idea for your use case. I would likely still make an admin portal to insert data. If we are dealing with static pages that have a dynamic spreadsheet, I would look up a Wordpress or Drupal solution first.
After reading your comment, I'm thinking that it may be easier in some situations like a teacher posting curriculum. It's also much easier than setting up a Wordpress deployment.