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Question

Hi guys! I'd like to make Notion as CMS for a blog post. I know you can get properties but not the content of the page (which seems important to get if you want to run a blog with Notion). I check a project like Feather.so. The goal of this app is to transform a Notion database (and their page) to a blog. They manage to get Databases and the page content to display it.

https://feather.so/help/what-is-feather-and-how-it-works

I think it's not possible to Webstudio (yet?). I'd like to make some test for a client which is working on Notion. When I'm reading the API doc of Notion it seems complexe because you have to make multiple API calls to get all what you want... Not sure it's possible, but I think Notion would be a very good candidate for blog posts. It's easy to setup for clients, lot of seems using it and it's a cheap solution comparing to other headless CMS.

Do you have any recommandations or advices?

Of course I've watched the video on Youtube.

paso_sb · Answer

I am using Notion for a current Project aswell. I am very happy with it, works pretty well for most of my usecases.
Sth. important to mention, u can only use content stored in Databases in Notion, not the actual Site content

Milan Boisgard | Uncode School · Answer

Not sure to understand. You can get the page with properties and content of the page.

In the John's video, it seems not possible to get the content of the page...

https://youtu.be/j6JcJ32mxLQ?si=eqmJjQET9DrVmEsW

Bogdan · Answer

They use own rich text format instead of html or markdown which would require us to support it internally.

Milan Boisgard | Uncode School · Answer

All right @TrySound thanks. So right now it's not possible to have a blog running with Notion like feather.so?

Milan Boisgard | Uncode School · Answer

@paso_sb I assume you don't use content of the page?

John Siciliano · Answer

I see you've seen the GitHub issue about this. Laying out content is the least of the worries. Problem is it takes 4+ API calls to get page content.

Feather is doing two things, 1. they have their own fields in feather for you to store meta data as Notion Pages don't have that and 2. they are calling the API 4+ times so its slow. Maybe they have cache but the sites I checked were not impressive

John Siciliano · Answer

Coda, a notion alt, is closer but still has issues https://github.com/webstudio-is/webstudio/issues/3708

John Siciliano · Answer

though now that we have Markdown Embed, it might be worth revisting

paso_sb · Answer

no, just content from Notion DB's.

Milan Boisgard | Uncode School · Answer

Thanks John. Too bad it’s not more plug and play. It would be a good CMS for blog. A lot of clients are using it and it’s easy to understand for them. But if you say performance are not ok…

John Siciliano · Answer

4+ consecutive API calls is just terrible. I would like to use Notion as well but even if Webstudio supported chaining the calls together it would be pretty rough on performance and maintenance for users. Coda.io offers the same experience as Notion but they have a DB column type that lets you use the block editor (called Canvas). There is hope with them

Milan Boisgard | Uncode School · Answer

Indeed, the lighthouse score on Performance is awful...

It's really too bad because lot of clients are using Notion and I think it could be a huge promotion of Webstudio to be able to use Notion as a headless CMS for a blog. But if I well understand this topic is on the Notion side... I'm not sure there are gonna change their API! ^^

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