I'm just finishing up a tool that lets you use Google Sheets as a data API resource that returns JSON. In my particular case I have many clients who want the ea

I'm just finishing up a tool that lets you use Google Sheets as a data API resource that returns JSON. In my particular case I have many clients who want the ease of use of WordPress but don't have the resources to keep it properly maintained in terms of update security. Many of these clients do not actually need to update most of their site on any sort of frequent basis. The case that prompted my new project is a restaurant who updates their daily specials on a daily basis, their seasonal specials on a monthly basis, and other menu items maybe 2-3 times a year in addition to semi-frequent homepage background image changes and an occasional flash message. Instead of giving them WordPress, this is what I did: The site is built in Jekyll so it is 100% static. The dynamic portions of the site like the food menu makes use of Jekyll's data files feature. The site owner makes changes to their menu in a Google Sheet (which is where they typically store this anyway) and then chooses a deploy target and submits a custom Google Form. The form submit pings a listening Go server on the deploy target which then kicks off a build script. The build script requests the Sheet data one sheet at a time and stores the results in JSON files which Jekyll can use. A couple of additional steps to get images into place and then the site is compiled by Jekyll and linked into the nginx webroot. The script even writes back to a log sheet to let the user know how the build went. With selectable deploy targets the site owner can preview her changes on a staging site first before deploying to prod. And just like that, the user has a site with all the speed and security of a static site and all the flexibility of a dynamic site.