How would YOU build a no-code "mad libs" type site?
I want to build a simple site, where members fill out a form with attributes (let's say name, hair color, favorite car) and a short story is then personalized for them based on their form entries.
The output story would be 1-5 pages long. Each personalized story would "live" at a unique URL after being created. Ideally it would be HTML, but I suppose I could live with embedding a PDF or Google Doc (if that was the outputed format).
Would it be possible to dynamically pull in such info into chunks of text using Airtable or Google Sheets? Any other ideas? Thanks!!
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I totally had this idea 4 months ago! I was going to make customizable ebooks where people could swap out chapters they weren't interested in. To answer your question though, you can probably use A Google form + zapier to read formulas that display certain text based on the submission cells. The hook some thing to a pdf. This could also be done fairly easily in Google Apps Script. But that is some code.
Yeah I've been reading up on Autocrat integrations w/ Sheets and Airtable. Seems like that is one path, outputting as PDF or Doc once I get the automation down... I'll look into your G Scripts idea. Perhaps I may just have to hire a developer for this one. Worst case!
Well, are you a marketer? I can build you something in Google Appscript in exchange for help in whatever you specialize in. I'm sure we can come to an arrangement.
Interesting! Thank you for the offer. Lemme noodle on it and do some more exploring, will reach out if it makes sense. I'm primarily a Product Manager type by trade...
Can you clarify what you mean by the "chunks of text"? It sounds like these are not the form fields themselves but something else? If something else, what is generating that text?
Sure. I guess it would depend on the site platform, but ideally I'd have some sort of text container with both hardcoded text AND defined dynamic fields that would pull in info from a spreadsheet.
So Trey's detail page for Short Story #37 could live at ~ https://foo.com/trey/story37 and the main body of that page would be the personalized story:
[firstname] woke up at 9AM and combed his messy [haircolor] hair. He then go into his [car] and sped off to work. The end.
The above just seems like a better end product than having an embedded PDF.