
Show HN: You Don't Need WordPress – Create a Blog With Only Google Docs - patwalls
https://www.youdontneedwp.com/
======
moolcool
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 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!

~~~
bachmeier
> 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?

~~~
moolcool
(As good as) No login (if you're logged into Google)

Docs UI -- Editing documents in a proper word processor is better than most
blogging platforms

This lets you make a blog of existing docs

It's not a drop-in replacement for everything, but it's novel and makes sense
as an option for a lot of people

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patwalls
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 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

~~~
CJefferson
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?

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

~~~
keypress
Context context, always good to add context.

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miguelmota
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

~~~
smacktoward
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.

~~~
levythe
I never thought I would hear someone call markdown a hurdle to adoption. Maybe
I'm more semantically minded, but I have yet to find a markup syntax easier to
figure out than markdown, including the rich text editors in Google Docs.

~~~
smacktoward
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 down is way over their heads. The
pushback you will get from them if you try to force them to do it anyway is
typically epic. They will fight against it every step of the way.

It's not _impossible_ to get regular people to mark up text; WordPerfect did
so very effectively for many years. But it's worth remembering that (1) that
was in the 1980s, when people put up with having to learn things they didn't
want to because the technology wasn't advanced enough to offer them an
alternative, and (2) eventually the technology _did_ advance, and Microsoft
Word came along with its WYSIWYG interface and promptly put WordPerfect into a
hole in the desert.

It's also not impossible to write a static CMS that provides a normie-friendly
WYSIWYG interface, rather than having everything revolve around editing text
files. That's what Movable Type
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movable_Type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movable_Type))
was, for instance, a set of Perl scripts that provided a friendly WYSIWYG
interface over content stored in a database, and then ground out static pages
from that content whenever it changed. But modern SSGs are pitched to
developers first and foremost, so they all revolve around stuff like Markdown
and Git that are about as approachable to non-technical people as garlic is to
Dracula.

~~~
patwalls
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-document.

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

This is just my experience.

~~~
hjek
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](https://simplemde.com) [1]:
[https://etherpad.net](https://etherpad.net)

------
jmelloy
WordPress 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
In 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)

------
bad_user
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](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.

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

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

------
loosescrews
Or 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
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..

~~~
bigethan
FrontPage! Good memories...

~~~
davio
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.

------
Angostura
Or, 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. -

------
pronoiac
This 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.

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aorth
I 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
For 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.

------
zelon88
"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!"

------
franciscop
I 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)

------
gumbo
Please, if you are going to use this setup a new google account. The
permissions that this requires is crazy.

------
dr_dshiv
I 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?

------
udithishara
I'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

------
arikrak
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.

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

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

~~~
hjek
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.

~~~
patwalls
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

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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.

------
fhood
Hmm, 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.

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EminIsrafil
I 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.

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rilwis
Great 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.

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orsenthil
Why 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!

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O_H_E
I can actually see that being helpful for non-technical people

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lawrenceyan
Pretty cool. I wonder if Google will end up adding this in as a full fledged
feature at some point.

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scotchio
Super cool. Custom fields though?

~~~
patwalls
What do you mean custom fields?

~~~
graylien
wordpress 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

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f_allwein
Nice - so are there any actual blogs built on this that I can take a look at?

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seddin
How hard is it to just create a simple html file and throw som CSS on it ?

~~~
moolcool
For 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"

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qrbLPHiKpiux
But 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
Very mad. Also, I can't find anything easier to publish content than this
aside from Medium.

