Notion Sites are a Game-Changer

[@mbd1111]

WE JUST NEED NOTION TO LOCK DOWN THE DATABASES FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! As well as the ability to lock hidden properties so clients can't open and see all properties if we don't want them to. Am I alone in wanting this?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

You're certainly not alone! I've talked with folks, even within Notion, about this for several years. It's a very highly-requested feature, but also apparently quite difficult to get right. Hopefully we'll get it in the future.

[@mbd1111]

@@ThomasFrankExplains ok I’m glad it’s not just me! Hopefully one day we’ll get there. But this is all very exciting in the meantime!

[@karenlepage-mindfulmaker]

Agreed. This is useless if we can’t lock down the databases. I’ve made a workaround by duplicating every page I make public, locking the page, and deleting all the templates I use. I’ve been hoping for years notion could be a back end to a website. Sigh.

[@MelArmstrong]

Yes absolutely! This is the one thing stopping me from creating web pages in Notion.

[@urbancolab]

This is alarming. Does this mean that public visitors can navigate through to other pages on my notion that are not published? Or does it allow visitors to change the way the databases are viewed?

[@ebbono8562]

Notion was actually a website builder when it was first released. Market fit wasn’t there and they had to fire everyone and Ivan Zhao went to isolate in Japan thinking of what could he do. He then switched to a niche-ish doc builder and here we are back again like the start

[@enochleffingwell6624]

You are on point as always! It was hours after going live and you already have the video recorded and uploaded ready to drop. I'm 7 hours late and you already have your full website breakdown video ready for me to binge watch afterwards. Thomas Franks I LOVE going to your KZbin channel every time I see a new feature on Notion. You really make things simple for us. Thank you for your dedication to this community!

[@shadowstormz88]

26:14 A workaround for not being able to resize the width of single-column elements is to just drop it into the middle section of a "3 columns" block, and leave the left and right columns empty. You can resize the middle column in multiple ways from then (resize the middle section, or the entire 3-column block).

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Yep, I’ve done this before - but then the columns stack on mobile, so they’ll create space you might not want. It does work in a pinch though!

[@scottch4444]

I really love the fact that the search menu (ctrl + k) is integrated into the site for anyone to use. It's great if you have a wiki-style notion page, and you need to find things based on a keyword.

[@cem.goknil]

This is exciting! The ability to hide some or all of the properties & comments in sites would be very useful. For example, I just shared our project to-do with the client as a site. In the properties, they are seeing internal areas such as when we will do it.

[@shadedwizard8566]

This seems perfect for really simple and minimalistic portfolios. Maybe some simple landing pages as well. Definitely looking forward to your in-depth video on this tool

[@cmacmenow]

I'm a NOTION user from day one and this new feature really is Next Level Notion. Thanks Mr T for the demo. Super cool of you.

[@thiagovalentin688]

Amazing video!! Starting my Notion website right now! Thank you, Notion & Thank you, Thomas!!

[@alon_vita]

Thomas, your tutorials are excellent Thank you so much 🙏🏽 mostly on the fact that you're on-point and on-schedule EVERY TIME - its like I don't even have to think what's happening with Notion - I just go here 💖

[@Cclaudia228]

This is amazing and thank you for getting all these videos out! Could you do a video on how you use Notion day to day? From your task manager to notes system, flipping between workspaces etc? So curious how all these things come together for you

[@willymerdiansyah]

Why don't you compare with superso, bullet, etc that still use notion as the main engine

[@ryan18462]

Bro comparing it to Webflow lmfao

[@amiraliakbari]

Definitely a step in the right direction. Looking forward to when they make access control and privacy improvements for elements on the page like the database.

[@Augusto_Caten]

Is super the notion website builder still needed now that we have this?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

For the time being, tools like Super will have an edge for folks who want even more flexibility in their designs - e.g. Super will let you write CSS. Right now, they're different products with a bit more overlap. Notion Sites basically gets your Notion page, as it looks normally, online (but now with a basic menu). Super will let you make that page look any way you want, as will other tools like Notaku. (I like Notaku in particular because it can do dev-docs-style layouts)

[@Schwingi]

Thanks man! Not only praise, but also thoughtful critique. You've just gained a brand new subscriber! Cheers

[@craftdocs]

Finally, they are catching up. It is also flattering to be the inspiration for the new feature... ;)

[@andrestorres649]

great for an ever-changing portfolio of an artist / architect !!

[@dapperdudekyle]

Great video brother, excited for the website creation tutorial

[@SuperSurreal]

Incredibly helpful and informative video! Thank you very much for this! 💫

[@Talik13]

"Thomas the Frank Engine" HAHAHAHA I love that!

[@elijahmbang2728]

This info was very helpful. I just subscribe💙

[@torspedia]

I might use this for my online glossary, so I don't have to repeat myself each time I write about something. This will also give me a good reason to revive my secondary workspace, which is still under the Education Plus plan, that I haven't touched in well over a year... I'd rather not have any pages in my main workspace be published publicly.

[@NielsC_Runs]

Love this video! Thanks for the insights. When is the tutorial going to come up that gives us a direct insight into how exactly you set up the page you highlighted?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Hopefully will have that live tomorrow or Weds at the latest!

[@NielsC_Runs]

@@ThomasFrankExplains Awesome! Looking forward to it 🤩

[@NielsC_Runs]

@@ThomasFrankExplains ???

[@gustavoachong1522]

Amazing!!!! Thanks for the quick update!!!

[@jennielakenanofficial]

I can help with the Elementor featured templates 😂🙋 lol JK. As a WordPress designer who also uses Notion, I love how this new feature makes DIYing a website so accessible to new businesses!

[@gtessier]

Awesome video thanks! Are they going to offer the ability to add HTML code and CSS on top of it?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

They haven't mentioned anything about that, but if you need that ability now, you can use Super to create your website on top of Notion instead of using Notion Sites :)

[@diomandakcurls1964]

Please make a Playlist of all the videos you have about Notion website.

[@louisasaelens2183]

Hi Thomas, Thank you for this video :) I have a couple questions you may know the answer to: - Can we still publish pages where the client / someone external can comment or edit? I don't see it as an option anymore (we often publish & share instead of adding the client as guest) - What do you do when you want to make changes to your site and it's already live -> everyone will see the changes in real time? for example they'll see me typing and re-arranging while they are on my website? You made the Blog 2 in a separate page, they don't see it until you update? Same for your templates page adjustment

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

1. Yep! They just moved those options from the Publish tab to the Share tab. Once your page is public, you'll see a new "Anyone with published link" option in the Share tab, and you can choose from Can Edit, Can Comment, and Can View. 2. I've asked Notion about this, as it's a valid concern. In the mean time, I'd recommend creating a backup/staging copy of your site where you can make changes. When you're ready, you can copy and paste them over to the public version quickly, so the maintenance time is minimal.

[@louisasaelens2183]

@@ThomasFrankExplains Thank you!

[@Vibols-Here8There]

Dear Thomas, When will Notion calendar is optimized for ipad and hand writing?

[@the.kingant]

@ThomasFrankExplains Could this work as a way to allow customers to be updated on progress of their projects without linking to my direct Notion page? Like say I have a project that has multiple goalposts and instead of using email or social media to keep them up to date on progress just point them to this site and revoke access after the project is complete.

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Yes, I think that would work. There's nothing in this release that really changes that use case - you've always been able to make a page live on the internet. But now you could put it on a custom domain, which might look more professional when working with clients. Keep in mind that there's no access control once you make a page public, though. If you don't turn on Search Engine Indexing, the URLs would be hard to find without having the link - but they're still technically public.

[@vPeteWalker]

FYI I wasn't able to create any new notion sites on the free plan. I was, however, able to rename the existing domain without upgrading. Hope that helps!

[@AlisonSmith-p9h]

This was very helpful! Thank you.

[@JGNiDK]

You missed to put the link to the full website guide, in your video, as promised.

[@kasratabrizi2839]

Would be very cool if notion can also add CSS (maybe even perhaps javascript) functionality to be able to style your site as you please. Because at the end of the day, the data is just a bunch of databases but how we present them should be up to us. Maybe have a simple mode like how notion works now and also have a developers mode where you can really customise the whole layout and styling.

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Agreed - though if you want that, you can already get it using Super.so or other Notion site builders. They do exactly what you're saying here; they use Notion as the CMS and create display wrappers around it that let you write your own CSS and such.

[@kasratabrizi2839]

@@ThomasFrankExplains Wow I didn't know that. Thanks! Would be cool if you also made a follow up video about that as well!

[@joeraschke]

Awesome! That's a great quick intro.

[@tonymatthews6928]

Thanks for a another great release explainer video. I just want to say that your strength is empathy and understanding of your market. It is clear in your comment responses. We need more of this in tech. Please Microsoft hire him as a consultant! 😂 Maybe there's a course in that. Thank you so much.

[@yk_david]

Thanks for this new video! Now that notion page can be published online as site and even GA can be added, do you think whether if we can set Adsense on notion published website?

[@FedericoEndrek]

Hi Thomas, congrats on the great work! I would really want to try it but 129 dollars is too much for most of people on developing markets. It would be nice to have option for a free trial or a differentiated price for countries with lower income. Thanks anyways for sharing, just watching the video was really eye opening. Keep up it up!

[@stonalberto3202]

Is it possible to embed the link into Blogger page?

[@lalineaa]

I'd love to see some examples of Notion sites that don't look like a someone's portfolio or blog. Any sites that are more corporate looking or for businesses?

[@craig_drummond]

Can you embed JavaScript or Iframes?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

I don’t believe so, but you can embed actual websites - e.g. you can embed a link and create a view of that site, as I did with the ComvertKit form

[@enochleffingwell6624]

@@ThomasFrankExplains I look forward to watching your full build to figure out how to embed actual website view. Because that sounds like an epic super block functionality if I've ever seen one.

[@nam-nguyen-101]

Hey Thomas and everyone. Are there any ways to automate this process? I have a database, let's call it "Answers". It has five main properties atm: Words (Title), Answer (Text), Check answer (formula), Next Review (formula) and Correct answers count (number). Whenever I create a new item/drag an item to this database, I want the "Correct answes count" to tally up by 1 if the data within the "Words" property matches that of current items in the database. At the moment, I've managed to do this, using Relation and Rollup properties, but I have to manually update the Relation property "Related Answer Box". So, how can I automate this process? If you could help me out, I'd be really grateful! Thanks!!!

[@tomasrampas318]

Did you do any experiments with using databases on notion websites? Like for example I have a roadmap that I would love to share about the project, but without the need to manually copy and paste stuff. But just allow the community to see where the project stands as of today. Thx!

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Hmm, do you mean showing only the pages in the database that represent public (or at least non-secret) roadmap items? Technically, if you want to share a database to the internet, the entire database will be live on the internet. However, if you add a filter to the source database, people won't be able to browse their way to other pages within it (though the new search option in the Header customization might change this, so you might want to experiment).

[@diomandakcurls1964]

How do I embed a questionnaire in notion?

[@FelipeMassara]

What I didnt like was that the light mode option doesn’t works. I tested on my browser and it kept dark.

[@jewelcrystal]

I don't have a custom domain but as a Notion plus account owner I can toggle off Notion watermark.

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Ah, perhaps that got changed after launch!

[@nicolas-duchemin]

Too bad there's no password-protected page.

[@CauterizeKing]

Thanks a lot Thomas! I'm looking to get back to enjoying the experience of creating websites. Wordpress, even with graphical page builders like Elementor is just so clunky. I love being able to add little bits of custom CSS and JS but it gets messy REAL FAST. Perhaps NOT havijng that possibility in Notion is a saving grace for me. I could have my main domain on Notion, and a subdomain on Wordpress, though, right?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Yep! The only snag on that right now is that Notion Sites can't handle apex domains - e.g. "thomasthefrankengine.com" can't be used, but "www.thomasthefrankengine.com" can. So you'd want to redirect your apex domain to the "www" version for your Notion site. Aside from that, you can easily set up any other subdomain to point anywhere you like. E.g. thomasjfrank.com points to our WordPress site, while community.thomasjfrank.com goes to Circle.

[@CauterizeKing]

@@ThomasFrankExplains thanks for the reply!

[@archishraval6987]

Can we connect AdSense to these notion sites?

[@Rebellionrider]

Which mic is he using?

[@Entertainment-]

SKMEI 1451

[@Entertainment-]

SKMEI 1451

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

It’s an Earthworks Icon Pro - my favorite mic

[@ShesConnectedweCOUNT]

I'm looking to add a chat feature to my notion website.. any suggestions? I tried Crisp, but couldn't get it to work.. love your videos Thomas! 🤘

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

I don't have a perfect answer, but I can say that it would need to be something you could embed as an actual, separate website (much like ConvertKit forms). Notion Sites won't let you embed actual HTML or JS code, so little chat widgets like Crisp's won't work. In general, if you need the ability to do custom JS/HTML, you'll want to either use Super or look for a website builder not based on Notion.

[@Joshetanner]

Honestly, never a feature I desired from Notion, and kinda bummed any resources at all are being put into something like this. It looks substandard, and the free website building options seem more logical anyway. Lots of other places I’d love to see Notion investing development time. Hopefully it’s part of a clearer goal to make Notion better, but it feels like a bad distraction.

[@aradrago3430]

Is it possible to link databases from notion to an website hosted elsewhere?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Yes, and there are a few services that make is pretty easy like Notaku (notaku.so/) and Super (super.so/). On the nerdier end, you could use the Notion API to fetch data from a database, store it in your own database, and build a website out of it. I haven't yet done this myself, but that's basically what the above tools are doing. Notion becomes your editor and effective CMS, but there's another database that actually hosts the public data and stores it statically.

[@AndrewMilich]

Incredible update and video!

[@auvaplay]

With the new price increse you could be paying up to $24 a mounth, in my opinion, that i too expensive!!

[@PriscilaKlopper]

Let's hope the Notion team listens to you and release these things you touched on haha. So good.

[@MbonisiM]

Wordpress will be always My best

[@scottsherin5456]

Is there a way to use a generic URL without needing to buy a custom domain each time? I want to build custom guest guidebooks for my Airbnb management clients (most of which do not have their own custom domain) but I don't want the link I provide them to have my name on it. I am wondering if I can create a new notion account just called 'guidebooks' instead of my personal name, so every link says that instead? Any weigh in here from the crowd?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Yep, that would be pretty easy! You can even do it in your main Notion account - just create a new Workspace for this purpose. In Settings & Members -> Sites, you can click the ••• menu next to your default sub-domain and change it to whatever you like, as long as it's not already taken. Hope that helps!

[@scottsherin5456]

@@ThomasFrankExplains Super helpful. You still reply to comments despite having such a massive following, wow! Thanks so much (long time fan of the channel)

[@Notion688]

Thank you Thomas

[@DennisCarmody]

When you go to it on mobile it attempts to redirect you into the notion app. Definitely not a desirably feature…

[@Amado_Aguilar]

great video. Got me excited to create another blog site

[@nxvalism]

Is there any way we can add stripe to notion now ?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

There's no direct integration, but there are a couple options. You can use Stripe links, but you can also embed a Tally form that's connected to Stripe: tally.so/help/payment-forms

[@nxvalism]

@@ThomasFrankExplains Thx champ

[@yetkindev]

what about mobile view ?

[@MannyBernabe]

Thank you!

[@bulcub]

can you build banners?

[@DJPashn]

Can notion sites be useful for building SEO traffic?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Yep! But you’ll need to be on Plus or higher to customize your SEO details

[@PatrickStirling]

ahh! exactly what I've been wanting to explore for a while

[@urbancolab]

But what about SEO compared to other site builders?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

I'm no SEO expert, but if you turn indexing on, you'll see that the static site generates some basic, clean HTML that represents the content well. My read on it is that it shouldn't present any huge issues, SEO-wise.

[@urbancolab]

@@ThomasFrankExplains Thanks. I appreciate it.

[@Alignedwithmyself]

How to add a contact form or comment box to Notion sites?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

I've got a tutorial coming later today that will cover the contact form! It'll show how you can use an embedded Tally form for it. You could also use Tally for a comment box, since you can send Tally responses to a Notion database. If you did that, you could easily display the connected Notion database on a page to show comments (though I'd recommend adding a filter so you can manually approve comments before they show up).

[@Alignedwithmyself]

@@ThomasFrankExplains I look forward to it. Also, how can we protect a notion site from hackers?

[@aliallawati8335]

I am creating a website for medical students (as a graduating doctor) to use as a study tool. Will there be a way for me to make money with this notion website tool after the website builds enough traffic and popularity? Thanks!

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Perhaps! I don't think monetization is really specific to the website platform you use. If you're creating an app, course, coaching program, etc, you can use pretty much any website platform to promote it.

[@aliallawati8335]

Thank you for your response!

[@Chris-kq7ir]

Do you have a stake in Notion?

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

I don’t! Would be pretty sweet if I did 😁

[@jtorresmorag]

Thomas, thank you for the video👍🏼. Good option for building sites, but, too expensive, $10 per month, wow, there are definitely better options for building sites and at better prices, there are a lot of things that Notion Sites will have to improve 😉. Regards.

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Yep, I've got a whole section in this video comparing it with other options! I think it's fantastic for folks who aren't super budget-conscious and who want more flexibility than a link-in-bio site without a big learning curve. I think there are a lot of potential customers at that intersection.

[@MrKasoa]

Comparing this with webflow etc is a bit exaggerated don't you think ? 😅

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Not at all. Yes, WebFlow is a much more traditional tool that will let you achieve any design. But for a lot of people who don’t have that level of tech expertise and time to invest, Notion will give them enough flexibility to build what they want. And the CMS tools are the really win on Notion’s end IMO. I’ve worked deeply in a lot of website builder tools - all of them make working with a CMS way harder.

[@silvansoeters]

it is.

[@MrKasoa]

​@@ThomasFrankExplains I mean.. it's like you're comparing Paint and Photoshop here mate. Yes, both can draw, but they're worlds apart in terms of functionality and capabilities, you can't just compare them directly.

[@ItsLadyAnj]

It’s a yes for some projects but a no for saas products

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

I predict a LOT of SaaS products will use this for Knowledge Base/Help sites on subdomains. I wouldn’t build my SaaS homepage on it, but for stuff like that it’d be a strong consideration because of how quick it is to edit and update the content

[@enochleffingwell6624]

@@ThomasFrankExplains I think you're on point with your Knowledge base and support documentation prediction. I see the vision. The future looks bright. What an incredible time to be alive!

[@Xianleft]

Yeah, this is a GAME Changer, have you integrated any "membership" or ChatGPT Chatbots?

[@NEIKIRK]

They just need to buy out Super Builder.

[@L.I.T.H.I.U.M]

This isn't comparable to any website builders in the market. This is extremely simple.

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

It sits at a particular intersection where currently it might be the most powerful option. That intersection is, specifically, tools that are very easy for non-technical users to use and implement very quickly, as well as tools that have powerful CMS capabilities. Even if you view the website builder market as a one-dimensional spectrum, this is not on the simpler side of it. That'd be something like Carrd or a link-in-bio tool. But I think the market is better represented by something like a grid, where there are multiple dimensions of features and learning curves. This fits a particular spot there better than other tools, even if it has some major disadvantages in other areas.

[@L.I.T.H.I.U.M]

@@ThomasFrankExplains I think features and learning curves are so highly correlated that they are same thing. And the 1D spectrum would be less features-many features. Products that have less features but high learning curves (relatively) are faulty. The learning curve of Notion Sites doesn't even match the features of Square Space, and SS is easier to set up, better looking. The market for more simplicity finds value in websites like Substack. For example, many new news companies are setting up their website on Substack.

[@rahilchataiwalla5241]

Amazing

[@Muhluri]

This is nice.

[@divyv20]

Hey Thimas , really nice video ! I was wondering if I could help you with more Quality Editing in your videos , make a highly engaging Thumbnail and also help you with the overall youtube strategy and growth ! Pls let me know what do you think ?

[@silverviscin]

Bro you cannot seriously say with a straight face that publishing a Notion site is equivalent to Framer. That is the most glazing statement I've ever heard lmfao.

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Think about it from a market-segment perspective. Notion Sites absolutely can't do what can be done in Framer when it comes to design flexibility. I know this well - I built Flylighter's site from scratch in Framer after designing the UI completely from scratch in Figma. My point in the video is that Notion Sites ends up around the same price point when we factor in CMS functionality and custom domains - and that for a certain type of customer, it will be an equally-good or even better choice. Yes, there's a huge lack of design flexibility compared to Framer. But on the other hand, changing the layout within Notion's constraints is WAY faster, and adding new CMS items (e.g. blog posts) is way faster, easier, and more pleasurable do to (have you ever tried writing an article in Framer's CMS?)

[@silverviscin]

@@ThomasFrankExplains I disagree.

[@AbdelrahmanAnany]

Just get us repeated tasks somehow not templates, Notion

[@Raydianze]

Looks HORRID 😅

[@koenignero]

20% price increase because they are adding stuff no one asked for like the calendar 🤡

[@thewebstylist]

Dude shocked you actually in 2024 you said “w w w” before your domain. And you’re kind of a tech guy even, ha no one has needed to type that before a domain/site for over a decade

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

I said it very purposefully, as Notion Sites currently doesn't support apex domains. You have to include a subdomain, so you'd use "www." for the main domain instead of the apex domain on its own. I'm working on a full website tutorial that will show how to redirect the apex version to the "www" version in order to deal with this issue.

[@FacuPuig]

Innecessary expensive, not Worth it at all in my opinion.

[@ThomasFrankExplains]

Check the section on alternatives - I covered several! If you're ok coding a bit, you can built a site for free on Netlify or Github pages. I think Notion Sites makes sense for folks who are ok with the cost and want a tool that's very quick and easy to use. Especially in the realm of CMS-heavy sites (blogs, job boards, etc), Notion shines here.

[@picklejuice0]

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