7 ms·

Designing Synced Blocks

60 points by scapbi 5y ago

vikingcaffiene 5y ago
Notion has no doubt taken note that a lot of people (myself included) use them as a quick and dirty wswyg web site builder. This new feature can be used for a lot of things, but it strikes me as particularly good for that use case. In fact, if I were a gambling man, I'd wager that their product roadmap is full of gems like this and are leading to them positioning themselves as a competitor to the likes of Squarespace and Wordpress.
- thatswrong0 5y ago
  I thoroughly enjoy writing "nice" internal articles for my company in Notion. It just works. Props to them for pulling this off so effectively. I look forward to seeing what they've got coming in the pipeline.
- tylersmith 5y ago
  I'm using Notion as the DB for a simple jobs site with a static frontend and it's been really nice. Super easy to use CRUD interface out of the box and it's easy to rapidly iterate on data models. Normally I approach these kinds of projects with a well planned out data structure and proper migrations but the velocity in getting something usable out the door and getting people to use it as been well worth the shortcut. I hope Notion leans into this use case.
  - vaughan 5y ago
    > well planned out data structure and proper migrations Schema design is a process of discovery and code-first approaches become too sticky to change. I think we need to head back to the ease of MS Access for data modeling and migrations should be automated.
bnj 5y ago
Really cool to read about the source for the idea and how it developed over time. But it continues to be disappointing that notion’s “free for individual students and educators” plan only applies to colleges with a .edu domain. I find myself really wishing that something like notion was being developed on a not for profit basis with more portability for data. I always feel the same way about Twitter; there’s so much utility being built here but the profit motive makes it hard to invest in long term because eventually it will be bought out or something else. I mean I don’t have a solution here but it’s a shame that tools like these represent the digital public commons but they’re built and controlled by profit motivated provare entities.
- benrbray 5y ago
  Check out Athens [1]. It's closer to Roam than Notion, but it's free and open source, and they seem to be headed in the right direction: [1] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
  - bnj 5y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation!
- nobody0 5y ago
  Notion dropped block limits for free plan few years ago, so you should be able to use it for free. Though things like API and file upload limits are still there and ask for a personal paid plan.
- quenix 5y ago
  I just signed up to the "free for individual students and educators" plan using an .ac.uk domain (the UK equivalent of the US' .edu). Perhaps your problem is more of an edge case? What is the TLD you are trying to use?
  - ThePadawan 5y ago
    (not parent) AFAIK .edu is used by pretty much all US universities, and very few outside the us. I went to a university that does have a .edu domain (ethz.ch is aliased as eth.edu), but that was a completely undocumented feature. You just had to be in-the-know.
amelius 5y ago
This seems similar and less powerful, though perhaps more user-friendly, compared to how web template engines can copy content from multiple sources.
2dvisio 5y ago
How different is this from the same concept in Confluence that allows you to embed pages or excerpts from other pages?
g8oz 5y ago
Notion claims it can be a 1 stop replacement for Confluence, Jira and Trello. Has anyone tried that? How did it go?
- bitneuker 5y ago
  We did 1.5 years ago, and to be honest, it's been a mixed bag. Large workspaces become pretty slow, but it's nice to have everything in a single place (docs, onboarding, issues etc). The only thing I really miss is the jira auto issue closing feature when merging a PR. Besides that it's been decent, though the slowdowns and slow search can be a pain.

60 points by scapbi 5y ago

Notion has no doubt taken note that a lot of people (myself included) use them as a quick and dirty wswyg web site builder. This new feature can be used for a lot of things, but it strikes me as particularly good for that use case. In fact, if I were a gambling man, I'd wager that their product roadmap is full of gems like this and are leading to them positioning themselves as a competitor to the likes of Squarespace and Wordpress.

thatswrong0 5y ago
I thoroughly enjoy writing "nice" internal articles for my company in Notion. It just works. Props to them for pulling this off so effectively. I look forward to seeing what they've got coming in the pipeline.
tylersmith 5y ago
I'm using Notion as the DB for a simple jobs site with a static frontend and it's been really nice. Super easy to use CRUD interface out of the box and it's easy to rapidly iterate on data models. Normally I approach these kinds of projects with a well planned out data structure and proper migrations but the velocity in getting something usable out the door and getting people to use it as been well worth the shortcut. I hope Notion leans into this use case.
- vaughan 5y ago
  > well planned out data structure and proper migrations Schema design is a process of discovery and code-first approaches become too sticky to change. I think we need to head back to the ease of MS Access for data modeling and migrations should be automated.

bnj 5y ago

Really cool to read about the source for the idea and how it developed over time. But it continues to be disappointing that notion’s “free for individual students and educators” plan only applies to colleges with a .edu domain. I find myself really wishing that something like notion was being developed on a not for profit basis with more portability for data. I always feel the same way about Twitter; there’s so much utility being built here but the profit motive makes it hard to invest in long term because eventually it will be bought out or something else. I mean I don’t have a solution here but it’s a shame that tools like these represent the digital public commons but they’re built and controlled by profit motivated provare entities.

benrbray 5y ago
Check out Athens [1]. It's closer to Roam than Notion, but it's free and open source, and they seem to be headed in the right direction: [1] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
- bnj 5y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation!
nobody0 5y ago
Notion dropped block limits for free plan few years ago, so you should be able to use it for free. Though things like API and file upload limits are still there and ask for a personal paid plan.
quenix 5y ago
I just signed up to the "free for individual students and educators" plan using an .ac.uk domain (the UK equivalent of the US' .edu). Perhaps your problem is more of an edge case? What is the TLD you are trying to use?
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  (not parent) AFAIK .edu is used by pretty much all US universities, and very few outside the us. I went to a university that does have a .edu domain (ethz.ch is aliased as eth.edu), but that was a completely undocumented feature. You just had to be in-the-know.

amelius 5y ago

This seems similar and less powerful, though perhaps more user-friendly, compared to how web template engines can copy content from multiple sources.

2dvisio 5y ago

How different is this from the same concept in Confluence that allows you to embed pages or excerpts from other pages?

g8oz 5y ago

Notion claims it can be a 1 stop replacement for Confluence, Jira and Trello. Has anyone tried that? How did it go?

bitneuker 5y ago
We did 1.5 years ago, and to be honest, it's been a mixed bag. Large workspaces become pretty slow, but it's nice to have everything in a single place (docs, onboarding, issues etc). The only thing I really miss is the jira auto issue closing feature when merging a PR. Besides that it's been decent, though the slowdowns and slow search can be a pain.