From no-code to some-code

I’ve tried to do something I’ve never done: rely on a service to handle a website.

I’ve always wanted to be in total control of what I do.

But then I fell in love with Notion and the idea of having it power websites, as I explained in this post.

In there I mentioned the possibility to host the landing page of my new course.

I have changed my mind because I had the need to customise it in ways that weren’t possible with Notion or any of the tools built around it.

In particular I had to embed a button that linked to a payment modal, and this wasn’t possible in a simple way.

So here’s what I did: I built the landing page in Notion, because I really like how it’s easy to draft.

Then I exported it to HTML.

The HTML output is fairly clean, with minimal CSS.

Then I added some bits to handle responsive, I customised the HTML to host the payment processing, then I changed some things up.

I’m going to publish this using Cloudflare Pages.

So instead of being full no-code, I used no-code to create the draft of something that I then enhanced with code.

I like this idea.

The course I’m going to do next, The JavaScript Course, is still built in Notion, because I plan to use its flexibility to make my life easier while shipping the course.

But I’ve decided to just keep that part on Notion (along with all my private stuff). It’s really wonderful for this use case.

After the course ends I might probably do an export of the course on Notion and put it in a static site.

So I get the benefit of having a site that I can update with drag and drop and instantly updates (remember the course is cohort-based, so every day new lessons unlock), and in the end once it’s “done” it can be in some sort of “archive mode”. Still not sure if it’s doable, but it’d be cool.

I still have some issues in going full no-code.

I lose control.

And I want control.

Control, among with freedom, is one of the things I value the most.