Honestly I can’t believe my eyes and I have to tell you what I just found out. I recently stumbled across a service that allows me to run websites, apps or whatever I want – all with a simple Google Sheet. This service is called Sheety, which I found on Product Hunt. In short, Sheety lets you build a website with any Google Sheet and instantly turn it into an API – all for free.
Why build a website with Google Sheets
You are you You’re probably wondering why you should build a website with Google Sheets when there are numerous services like WordPress.
Reading: How to create a website in google sheets
And that’s a valid question. So let’s break it down: The idea behind Sheety and similar tools is definitely not to replace services like WordPress, as they are irreplaceable. Still, let’s briefly review some of the benefits of building a website with Google Sheets so you can decide if this is the tool for your project.
- Google Sheet is basically a spreadsheet – and it’s free.
- Almost everyone knows how to create/update a table.
- Tables can be easily saved and backed up.
- Good for creating a quick and free personal website.
- Suitable for quick website prototyping.
- Great for building a newsletter list.
- No need to export/import your spreadsheet data.
Which service should I use?
As mentioned earlier, Sheety is one of those available services. There are alternatives to Sheety, from free to premium, to help you build your site.
- Sheety
- Sheet2Site
- Browse alternatives on Product Hunt.
For the purpose of this article, we use the Sheety service, which is free yet powerful.
Sheety – turn your Google Sheet into an API
The Sheety service turns all Google Sheets into an API so you can pull your data on any website. Before you get started, you should read the following articles to become familiar with this service.
- Getting started
- Make a request
How to Build a Simple Portfolio Website Using Google Sheets
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Since almost everyone needs a way to showcase their work, portfolios are one of the most popular types of websites. So let’s create a simple portfolio website like the one shown below.
You can see the final live version on CodePen.
Create a Google sheet
1. Create a new Google sheet and then add two sheets named Meta and Items.
2. In the Metasheet, add Title, Read More, and Footer data as shown below.
3. In the Items sheet, add Title, Description, Tags and Screenshot columns shown below. These columns act as dummy data to fill in the portfolio items.
Connect the Google Sheet to Sheety
1. Sign in to Sheety with your Gmail credentials.2. Add a new project, then set Project Name to Portfolio and Spreadsheet URL to your Google Sheet and click Create button.
3. Click the Synchronize button to generate the API endpoints. After that you should be able to see the Meta and Items endpoints.
Prepare the website
See also: How to Create a Vlog With WordPress.com
For this article, I have uses the CodePen website. You can use any other services or create your own HTML on your local host.
1. Create a pen in CodePen and name it Sheety Portfolio.2. Add Tailwind CSS framework. This is used to quickly create a visually pleasing layout.
https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/tailwindcss/1.2.0/tailwind.min.css
3. Add the Vue.js framework and the Axios library used to fetch data from the API and fill the HTML properly.
https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/ libs/vue/2.6.11/vue. min.js https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/axios/dist/axios.min.js
4. Copy the HTML and JS code from this pen and paste it into your pen. There is no need to explain the HTML and JS codes here as it is beyond the scope of this article. However, I have added some comments to the codes to help you understand the codes.
5. Now you should be able to see a website like the first screenshot. From now on the new data will appear automatically as soon as you refresh your Google Sheet and refresh your pen.
Conclusion
All in all I’m glad I found this Sheety website and this one shared service with you. In this article, we first learned about a cool service for building a website using Google Sheets. Second, we created simple websites to unleash the potential of these services.
It would be cool if you shared your Google Sheets powered websites with us in the comments section below.
See also: How to Make Money on YouTube: 7 Effective Strategies
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