Do people still need websites, or just a public page? | Hacker News Reader

Do people still need websites, or just a public page?

4 pointsparavaib11 comments

Curious how people here think about this.

Building websites is easier than ever, but maintaining them still feels like overhead in many cases.

I’ve been exploring the idea of a “public page” — not a full website, not a CMS — just a clean, read-only place to share information that already lives somewhere structured (like a spreadsheet).

I put together a small experiment to understand this pattern: https://www.sheet2notice.com

Not looking to promote it here — more interested in whether this problem resonates, and how others solve it today.

Do you still build a site anyway, or is there a lighter approach that works well?

View on HN

https://veneer.leftium.com is a similar project: a thin layer over Google sheets/forms:

- Adds markdown support

- Makes it prettier, especially on mobile

- Adds open graph social sharing image/title

Based on actual convention used by (dance) groups in Korea to use Google forms for event sign ups. It doesn't require changing their workflow: the original forms still work (as a fallback), they just need to share a different URL based on the form ID.

I've shown Veneer to several dance group organizers who use these Google forms on a regular basis. While two people have embraced the concept and registered their custom domains for their forms most people are surprisingly hesitant to use Veneer. Objections I've heard:

- Already have a workflow; don't want to learn something new

- Know how to program themselves, can make themselves if needed

- Already registered an unused domain, but have other plans for the site

- Prefer simple (even though I simplified: https://red.leftium.com)

Each Veneer page has a link to the original Google form and sheet. (Also a link to the full MIT-licensed source.) Here is the only one that is "in production:" https://viviblues.com

This is a really useful data point, thanks for sharing it.

The hesitations you listed line up closely with what I’ve been seeing too — especially “already have a workflow” and “prefer simple”. It feels like most resistance isn’t about capability, but about introducing anything that feels like a new tool, even if it’s thin.

That’s actually the tension I’ve been trying to solve as well: keeping the original workflow completely intact, and making the public layer feel more like a passive view than something you have to “adopt” or manage.

I think web sites are often a "feature" or means to an end. It may be better to focus on the benefits. (Like more sales/revenue. Reduced customer support. Etc.)

For example, I had a client who wanted me to build a web site that hosted her piano lessons. She was sure if only they were hosted somewhere, people would flock to it.

I tried to tell her what she really wanted was marketing and sales, which the web site could be a small part of. She insisted so we built the site anyway. I don't think it's ever gotten any sales...

I agree, and that’s exactly the failure mode I’ve seen too.

What seems to work better is when the “website” isn’t treated as a sales or marketing engine at all, but as a low-friction publishing surface for information that already exists and already has an audience.

That’s actually what I’ve been experimenting with www.sheet2notice.com: instead of building sites, letting people expose a public, read-only page directly from something they already maintain (like a spreadsheet). No funnels, no SEO promises — just a clean, auto-updating view over an existing workflow.

In that setup, the page supports whatever goal already exists (updates, coordination, trust), rather than pretending to create demand on its own.

I’m not so sure about for personal websites, but business people love their spreadsheets and dashboards. I could see people wanting an easy way to link an auto-updating dashboard to a spreadsheet. This stuff might already exist, I’m not sure. Where I work we use Microsoft, not Google.

That makes sense.

I’ve noticed a similar thing — business contexts already revolve around spreadsheets and dashboards, so the desire isn’t really “a website” as much as a stable, public view that stays in sync.

In those cases it feels less like publishing and more like exposing an existing source of truth in a readable way.

Curious whether you’ve seen this solved cleanly in Microsoft-centric setups, or if people mostly accept heavier tooling there.

I think this is something PowerBI can do. But that feels like a heavier layer of tooling. That weight might be inherent, as the data will always be different, as well as how it’s displayed.

It’s possible there are common use cases for small businesses that could be well served by a more standardized tool.

Personally, I like and prefer websites, but it seems search engines do not.

A lot of things are put on social media now which is where most people seem to hang out. (God knows why.) If you are not a Faecebook or Instagram etc member then you can't even view them.

Personally I agree — I still prefer websites too.

What I find interesting is that a lot of information now lives outside traditional sites:

updates on social platforms

shared docs

spreadsheets

internal tools that get screenshotted or linked

In many of those cases, people aren’t really trying to “publish” in the classic sense — they just want a stable, public reference that doesn’t require joining a platform or logging in.

Search engines still matter, but it feels like a growing amount of content is accessed via direct links rather than discovery.

Curious whether you’ve seen good lightweight patterns for this that don’t turn into full websites.

In regard to the last question, I wish I do know but don't. I think the internet took a wrong turn in the 2010s. Yes, I am well aware of spam and cyberbullying but they've been used as an excuse to get rid of the better aspects of the internet.

Agreed. Many guardrails were necessary, but they also shifted publishing toward platforms and away from simple, owned spaces.

The middle ground seems harder to find now. Thanks for sharing this view.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com