Zero-Budget Web Dev: Moving from Discord/Drive to Google Sites

In the first part of this series, the author discusses their web development journey and the challenges they faced when transitioning from Discord and Google Drive to Google Sites. Initially, using Discord for communication and Google Drive for file storage worked well for a small group of alpha testers. However, the author found that going public with a public-facing website presented new problems.

Discord became cumbersome for onboarding new users, lacked discoverability, and lacked the professionalism expected by a public audience. The author wanted a clean, low-maintenance way to go public without spending a lot of time on a custom web setup or paying high monthly SaaS fees. They considered several other distribution options, but Google Drive API emerged as the best choice due to its reliable storage, easy access control, and seamless integration for the launcher's update system.

Google Sites was chosen as the public web front, as it offered a free and simple solution, but it came with its own set of challenges. The author faced the iframe sandbox restrictions of Google Sites, which blocked custom HTML code from being embedded and navigating the main website seamlessly. They developed a workaround by dividing navigation into two flows: external actions (like Gumroad, Discord, and support emails) were kept as custom HTML/CSS buttons that opened in a new tab, while internal site navigation was handled using Google Sites' built-in UI components.

The author concluded that transitioning from Discord channels to Google Sites was a significant relief, but there was still more work to be done in making the site mobile-friendly, optimizing for AI compatibility, and designing an effective sitemap.