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Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs
- patwalls 8y agoHey 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 familiar with. Another cool thing, I built and launched this project in 24 hours and streamed the whole thing on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/313288148 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/313288148). I started with just an idea, and streamed the entire process to launch and had a few thousands viewers tune in. Excited to get your feedback. Pat
- arayh 8y agoNice to see an open-source project like this, but where can we find the repository / source?
- sp332 8y agohttps://github.com/patwalls/ydnw https://github.com/patwalls/ydnw
- saberworks 8y agoI really like this. I have a pretty big legacy site with one section full of user-contributed (HTML/images) tutorials written over a period of 20 years (yes, the site has been up over 20 years) and it'd be nice to just copy/paste them into something like google docs, tweak them a bit to make all the styles match, and then republish them. Your site says the project is open source, but I can't find any link. Will you share a link to the source?
- patwalls 8y agoSure! https://github.com/patwalls/ydnw https://github.com/patwalls/ydnw Contributions are very welcome! Code is very hacky and I've been trying to manage making some changes between all the feedback I've gotten and my full time job.
- CJefferson 8y agoIt 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?
- ggregoire 8y agoThe name is inspired from You Don’t Need jQuery, You don’t Need MomentJS and so on.
- keypress 8y agoContext context, always good to add context.
- ashelmire 8y agoYou don't need a lot of things in your life; you shouldn't get insulted by people saying so.
- Mononokay 8y agoGetting offended over hobby projects, wow, this is a new low for HN.
- paulcole 8y agoI guess you're not going to like my side project: You Don't Need To Be Insulted By You Don't Need WordPress.
- rasengan 8y agoSolving accessibility (and simplicity) to blogging and freedom of speech, and in just 24 hours; this is awesome to say the least. I look forward to the words and wisdom that people will share with us through the platform.
- fucking_tragedy 8y agoVery cool! I'm guessing that this relies on Google not breaking, disabling or rate-limiting their Docs API, correct?
- patwalls 8y agoYes, very true. Important to think aboout. There is a rate limit on their API although I don't think I will hit it at this point of the project, but I do plan to start thinking about how I can cache/save the export from the Google doc for pages that are getting hit really hard. Any ideas?
- scott_s 8y agoIt's not cool to grab someone else's blog posts to use as your demo.
- gitgud 8y agoI also thought that was strange. Took me a minute to realise that he wasn't the author.
- hjek 8y agoI agree think there's plenty of room for new ideas for collaborative blogging, but I do think relying on centralised proprietary SaaSS is very problematic. Google can just take down your blog any day if they feel like it. With Wordpress I can host my own. I wonder if it would be possible to use something like Etherpad as backend instead?
- vezycash 8y ago>Google can just take down your blog any day if they feel like it. That's just the best case scenario. They could close your email, locking you out of gmail, youtube, and any other service tied to the registered email. And then since Google has been tracking related emails, they'll close those too.
- l_t 8y agoIt 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.
- askmike 8y agoI do agree that static site generators are preferable for many reasons. But I think that people who want to deal with statically generated files (all technical people) rather write their content in markdown anyway. I don't think there is enough overlap in the two audiences.
- wefarrell 8y agoI would suggest using google oauth for authentication rather than the username/password combo.
- asdf1234tx 8y ago"...I'm collaborating with dozens of writers.." You may be collaborating with more people than you know. Cause it's, you know, google. I wonder how many third parties get access to your data. Remember, when you aren't paying or pay very little, _you_ are the product.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoDoes Google have any clauses like this with regard to Google Docs contents? I didn't think they did, but maybe I'm naive. On another note that sentiment always reminds me of Morning Moon by the Tragically Hip (https://youtu.be/o-cI87djK2Y https://youtu.be/o-cI87djK2Y). It's a sentiment that bears a lot of truth, regardless of Google's privacy policy. But I digress... I'm not making strain Said, "Someone's paying When something's too cheap Somebody's paying something" You said, "Some one's paying something." Under a morning moon, yeah Say those little things that don't make anyone feel better, yeah
- jpatokal 8y agoThe data that G Suite organizations and users put into our systems is theirs, and we do not scan it for advertisements nor sell it to third parties [...] Google does not collect, scan or use data in G Suite Core Services [including Google Docs] for advertising purposes. https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-6.html https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-white... Disclaimer: I work at Google Cloud, but not G Suite/Docs.
- crummy 8y agoYou're saying that Google might be reading my blog posts if I use Google Docs? Somehow crawling it for content, maybe?
- pier25 8y agoDon't you find it difficult to maintain a consistent format/schema between many authors? I thought about using Google Docs for a publishing project, but the lack of an enforced schema made me pick a JS rich text editor instead. Also, how do you deal with images?
- keypress 8y agoI find Gdocs hard, because I'm not used to it. So it's really a case of which tool you are used to working with and are proficient at. People take to Wordpress relatively easily in my experience. So I'm reading your plus point specifically as the collaboration support in Gdocs.
- ladybro 8y agoEnjoyed watching the idea-to-launch process on Twitter and Twitch. Nice work, Pat!
- patwalls 8y agoThanks!
- hjek 8y agoIt 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.
- patwalls 8y agoAh 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
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoBut it's Google and right now we're mad at them. The most pleasurable set-up I do, for work and personal, is have a DO droplet hosting a bare-boned server, where static pages are served up, mostly text - because content is King, right?
- rcach001 8y agoVery mad. Also, I can't find anything easier to publish content than this aside from Medium.
- fhood 8y agoHmm, I can't hit the site in my browser, but curl is grabbing it just fine. However I am beginning to feel that the user experience might not be exactly equivalent.
- jmelloy 8y agoWordPress isn't really targeted at single-user blogs for technical people... it's targeted at an environment where you can have multiple people writing blog posts and doing design without being programmers or mucking with the server. And it fits that need very well.
- jedimastert 8y agoIn a comment from the author[0], he mentions that one of the reasons for making the product was because he likes the collaboration features of Google Docs. [0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18077455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18077455
- miguelmota 8y agoYou 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
- pavel_lishin 8y agoGoogle 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.
- mort96 8y agoI thought Inbox was reasonably safe. After all, it's part of their e-mail offering, right?
- jermaustin1 8y agoInbox was kind of an experiment and competition with their main GMail offering. It had resources that ABC probably felt could be used elsewhere, so they took what were probably the most used features from it, merged it back into GMail and killed it. Docs doesn't have anything in their current product line that they can do the same to, they might merge another product INTO Docs and kill that product, but never Docs itself.
- Bekwnn 8y agoSetting 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.
- ronaldl93 8y agoYou're still a C++ developer... A normal mom/dad who simply wants to share his/her latest cookie recipe isn't gonna want to deal with Jekyll.
- loosescrews 8y agoOr you could use the new Google Sites which has a lot of the same features and benefits. https://sites.google.com/ https://sites.google.com/
- patwalls 8y agoOh 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..
- sparrish 8y agoGoogle sites has been around since 2008. Hardly new.
- CharlesW 8y agoThe completely different Google Sites that OP is referring to was released less than six months ago.
- emilfihlman 8y agoThe footer is obnoxious.
- partiallypro 8y ago
- zelon88 8y ago"Ensure that your users never get any privacy at all! Why install Google analytics on your WP blog when you can just give the entire blog to Google in the first place!"
- aorth 8y agoI want to own my own content, servers, domains, etc... it's not even about Google specifically being evil—we gotta stop outsourcing stuff to people providing it to us for "free."
- cremp 8y agoFor me, it's all about knowing, and owning the stack. If something breaks, I know its my fault, and using the knowledge gained by setting it up, I should have a pretty good idea where to start. Never stop learning.
- scotchio 8y agoSuper cool. Custom fields though?
- patwalls 8y agoWhat do you mean custom fields?
- graylien 8y agowordpress has stuff like custom fields: https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/ https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/, allowing you to create more structured cateogories and taxonomies which can then be used for filtering and stuff. I think that's what they mean
- detaro 8y agoThe 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.
- seddin 8y agoHow hard is it to just create a simple html file and throw som CSS on it ?
- moolcool 8y agoFor most people, pretty hard. This comment reminds me of the comments left when Dropbox first shipped saying stuff like "This won't sell, people who want this service will just use rsync and rent a VPS"
- moolcool 8y agoI 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 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. Good work, OP!
- patwalls 8y agoThanks! 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)
- onetimemanytime 8y ago*<< "...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/ https://www.mapsmarker.com/docs/misc/google-maps-tos-changes...
- moolcool 8y agoThere'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.
- XJOKOLAT 8y agoBollocks.
- ndnxhs 8y agoThey might not shut down google docs but they will randomly lock your documents for a few days because a script thought they seemed unusual. Had it happen to me and apparently lots of others have had it as well.
- gumbo 8y agoPlease, if you are going to use this setup a new google account. The permissions that this requires is crazy.
- pronoiac 8y agoThis reminded me of https://www.sheet2site.com/ https://www.sheet2site.com/ , which lets you make a website using a Google spreadsheet. I think they’re nifty, and although I haven’t had a personal use case for them, I could see building a prototype with them.
- dr_dshiv 8y agoI was super excited by this because I do most of my writing in Google docs. But then I realized how much other information is in my Google docs! What are the privacy implications of signing up? If this project happened to be taken over by an evil villian, could they snoop my docs?
- EminIsrafil 8y agoI think this is pretty cool. I know more than one person who loves google docs and hates wordpress whom I will be forwarding this to.
- franciscop 8y agoI did something similar back in 2013-2014 for the initial Makers UPV blog[1], which was much later migrated to Ghost. The underlying technology we used is drive-db[2], a library I made to use a spreadsheet as the database. Then just used an obscure-ish Google docs API to retrieve each article content. When you wanted to publish an article, you had to create the doc, publish to the web and copy the link to the spreadsheet. This looks like a very well put together product of the hacky solution I did back in the day, so kudos! Edit: the best feature of this is that several people can collaborate in real time on an article! Something that Wordpress doesn't have and was used a lot for us in the beginning. [1] https://makersupv.com/ https://makersupv.com/ [2] https://github.com/FranciscoP/drive-db https://github.com/FranciscoP/drive-db
- Angostura 8y agoOr, if you can afford $20 per year, there's this https://blot.im https://blot.im which lets you dump stuff in a Dropbox folder to become blog posts. -
- arikrak 8y agoThis 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.
- brokenmachine 8y agoIs it necessary to give them access to the whole google drive for this to work? If so, this is a non-starter for me.
- vehementi 8y agoSame, wanted to play around with this but I won't risk it
- f_allwein 8y agoNice - so are there any actual blogs built on this that I can take a look at?
- rilwis 8y agoGreat idea. But how to change the template or add more data like custom fields? I've been using Meta Box plugin (https://metabox.io https://metabox.io) for custom fields and can't live without it.
- calimac 8y agoGoogle Docs EULA is predatory.
- udithishara 8y agoI've been using same idea for years now Using Spreadsheets instead of Docs, and it's not a product per-say, more like a go-to setup for medium size websites Glad to see more people are using the technologies freely available instead of using wordpress for every small project
- bad_user 8y agoI 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 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 little high, setting it up and all. But now that cost is virtually zero. And guess what ... it's mine, my blog, my website, on my own domain. It's part of my identity, it's the link I place in email signatures. It's my creation, just like my work or open source contributions. In 2005 when my career started I was also using a blogging service. Until my membership was revoked for some reason and I lost articles in which I poured my soul in. Never again. Outsourcing your blog to others is ... foolish. And not having a blog, as a computer scientist, is equally foolish. So setup a static blog with a tool like https://jekyllrb.com https://jekyllrb.com. The initial setup smells like yak shaving, however you'll get over it and you won't regret the investment.
- O_H_E 8y agoI can actually see that being helpful for non-technical people
- orsenthil 8y agoWhy do I have to sign up using my Google Account, and give you permissions to host my content in Google Docs in my Google Drive? And where is it Open Source? How can I use it without singing up? I looked for this information and could not find it. Thank you!
- lawrenceyan 8y agoPretty cool. I wonder if Google will end up adding this in as a full fledged feature at some point.