The AWZ no-code stack for your projects
Modern Makers - 26/07/2020
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Hi makers,
In the agenda this week:
💇 The is a new design on Bubble
✔ You can now clone apps on Adalo
🚀 A new tool to turn your Notion pages into custom websites
🃏 A video tutorial to learn how to build on Carrd
Enjoy!
This week, I spent some time to run some tests with the AWZ no-code stack. AWZ stands for:
A for Airtable, the tool to manage your project's database
W for Webflow, the tool to create your website and manage the UI
Z for Zapier, the tool that connects Airtable and Webflow to automate things
I think anyone interested in no-code should look at this stack to fully realise the incredible potential of these tools and the projects they can allow to create. With Airtable, you can export your databases into embedded code and display them on any media you want. It's very easy to set up but the data is only visible within an Airtable widget, with a very simple design and almost no customisation options.
On the other hand, things get really interesting when using the CMS functionality of Webflow. It is indeed possible to set up a Zap (automation created via Zapier) that will allow you to retrieve your Airtable data and add them as new items in your Webflow CMS. You will then be able to take full advantage of Webflow to best display these data on your site and create the design of your choice, without any restrictions.
A no-code stack composed of three tools of this type (Zapier can be replaced by Integromat for example) gives you a more than solid base that will allow you to launch your next digital projects.
🧰 Product
Long awaited by users, Bubble's makeover started this week. Bubble introduced a new design for its home page, the marketplace section and for the Academy, the section that gathers all the tutorials and lessons for new users.
We are now waiting for the redesign of the editor interface (a few very promising screenshots had circulated on Twitter a few weeks ago, fingers crossed).
Bubble has also published a crash course series with 10 videos for beginners to allow them to discover and better understand this platform.
Learn: Bubble Crash Course Series
It is now possible to clone your Adalo apps! This news will significantly reduce the development time of some projects. In the same way, Adalo now allows you to copy/paste elements and components from one app to another.
As part of this launch, Adalo is organising a "Make A Clone Challenge" contest with, for the winners, several free months of Adalo's PRO plan.
Participate: Make A Clone Challenge with Adalo
In order to boost its adoption and user base, Glide has just introduced a referral program. For each active user who registers with Glide from your referral link, you will unlock 100 rows for your application database. Glide considers a user as active from the moment it publishes an application with at least one user each month.
If you want to discover Glide and start a project, you can use my referral link 😉
Glide also released a very interesting new feature: it is now possible to let users discover a preview of your application before exposing them to the Sign In screen. Ideal for the user experience and to encourage your audience to sign in.
Discovered this week while I was browsing on Indie Hackers, Notion2Site is a tool that allows you to transform any Notion page into a website. Notion already natively allows to publish a page and make it public but the main limitations in my opinion are:
the display speed of the content
SEO clearly not optimised
the lack of analytics to analyse your audience data
This is one of the reasons why multiple tools have been launched in this niche, including Super.so, Fruition and now Notion2Site.
Notion2Site allows you to use your own domain name, to inject Javascript to add chat widgets or analytics modules on Notion or to add Google Fonts on your pages. The PRO offer is available for $8 per month and a free 7-day trial is available for those who would like to check if this tool keeps all its promises.
Discover: Notion2Site
⚒ Tutorials
Paul Grisel is a recognised expert on Carrd and he has decided to create video tutorials to show people how interesting and efficient Carrd can be when it comes to create a showcase site or a portfolio.
A very good resource for those who would like to develop a project with Carrd.
David Peterson of Airtable was invited this week for a conversation with Tom Osman in a webinar organised by Makerpad. For a little over an hour, David was able to present some of the latest features developed by Airtable, including the button field, as well as answer many questions asked by the participants. In my opinion, this content is therefore more suited for people who already have some knowledge and experience with Airtable.
Watch: Level-Up your Airtable skills with David Peterson
📦 In other news
Streamline UX is a collection of more than 9,000 illustrations for all your digital projects. Bookmark alert!
La BETA de include.ai est ouverte. A Chrome Extension to easily build, run, and share web automations to extract data, automate repetitive workflows and customise websites
A 40 minutes video to discover Figma (the collaborative design tool) by Traversy Media
Dorik introduces Inline Rich Text Editor to make it very easy to edit and design text on Dorik Website Builder
10 free templates to better organise your workspace on Notion
The CEO of Actiondesk, a French startup that wants to revolutionise the spreadsheet, unveils a list of 30 tools used by its teams (including Webflow, Notion, Airtable and Zapier)
Introducing Taler by Shopify, a social design tool that wants to compete with Canva
📖 Articles
No-Code is Eating the World - Hacker Noon
NoCode Revolution | Where to start with NoCode Tools - Jesse Showalter
Tracking the growth of low-code, no-code startups - TechCrunch
How to make money with NO CODE websites built with these 3 tools - Medium
Reflect wants to help you automate web testing without writing code - TechCrunch
5 Common Misconceptions About Low-Code / No-Code Platforms - Steer
AWS, Google, Azure to battle it out over low-code, no-code platforms - Telecom TV
That’s all for this week. If you like the content, don't hesitate to share it with your friends or colleagues.
I also invite you to send me your feedback on this content by leaving a comment below.
Have a great week,
Martin,