I 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.<p>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 in-case Google'd data were to ever be inaccessible, but it's a system that was easy to implement, and has worked well for a couple years without any perceivable negatives.
I've done something a bit similar on Lump.co, but I'm using Workflowy as a CMS there instead of Google Docs.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Plus, I'm already in Workflowy 24x7 anyway, so it makes updating my site a breeze.<p>At least until Workflowy changes their internal API endpoints, which will break everything. :)<p>If anyone wants to know more I'd love to talk about it or share the code.
I actually use Google Spreadsheets for signing people up to a newsletter. This way, if they want me to send emails through my mailing webapplication (alpha use, so i'm using it only for myselve right now). I only need to download the spreadsheet as *.csv and i can upload it right in my webapp. The spreadsheet doesn't need to be a specific structure fyi and the app supports multiple languages {{isEnglish}}my English message for {{FirstName}} {{/isEnglish}}{{isDutch}}mijn Nederlandstalig bericht voor {{FirstName}} (=my dutch message){{/isDutch}} in both subject, message (text) and message (html).. So it's quite flexible, i'm just not satisfied with my current layout...<p>I also tried to use it as a CMS. Using an 3rd party app in Google Drive for editing HTML files and then including it in my website, but i had problems with connecting the webapp with Google Drive OAUTH (spreadsheets was a no-brainer fyi). The problems were with a combo of Google Drive, OAuth and the .Net library that Google released (API V2. i suppose) :-(<p>I now use a file based database in Asp.Net MVC for my CMS. I'm updating it with every new website i have to create (if the client wants a CMS, off course).<p>I'm kinda curious what their backup method is when Google Drive goes down? (i thought about caching and a button for the client for cleaning the websites cache, so they could see their changes. )
I'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).<p>Happy to give anyone an account if you'd like to beta test.<p>Also, Brace.io folks -- great stuff. we should chat :)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2014/" rel="nofollow">http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2014/</a>
I 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: <a href="https://support.google.com/docs/answer/91588?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/docs/answer/91588?hl=en</a>
This is pretty cool. You can do something fairly similar with www.silk.co except it acts more like an online database and less like a static site. Basically, CSV to Website conversion where each page acts like a row on a DB. (Full disclosure - I work for Silk).
<a href="http://mynameisrage.com/" rel="nofollow">http://mynameisrage.com/</a> runs off of a SpreadsheetCMS I wrote ages ago. It's awesome and free :) I love that we get the off the shelf interface of Google Drive.
I don't see myself using something like this under any circumstances. I would just make my own database and call it myself.<p>It's not really a static site once you have dynamic content on it.