Notion is a flexible, customizable space for creating content. With Super, it’s the perfect place to write and publish a blog.
Overview of creating a blog with Super
The steps below will walk you through setting up a blog on Notion and publishing it on your Super site:
- Set up Notion for your blog content. You’ll need a blog landing page and a blog database for your blog posts
- Use Notion databases to create and publish your blog posts
- Sync the blog to your Super site
Set up a master database
The easiest way to set up a blog in Notion is to use one master database. There you can add all your drafted and published posts.
Follow our instructions below to set up a master database from scratch, or download our Narrative template with a ready-to-go database.
- First, create a Notion page where you will store your blog by pressing the Add a page button (+) in your Notion sidebar and giving the page a title, like “My Blog”
- Click on the more icon (three dots) on the top right of your Notion page and toggle Full width for more space for your blog
- Add any introduction text, images, or embedded content your readers will see when they click on your blog
- Under your introduction content, type /toggle and select Toggle list
- Inside the toggle, type /page to create a new subpage to store your master database and title it “Blogs”
- From the suggested templates, click on the Table database
- Under Select data source, click on New database
- Add your first entry to the database and give it a title, like "Blog One” (you can change this later)
- Add any content to your first post or leave it blank while you set up your blog. You can populate the new page with any content — it can be a simple text entry, images, videos, and other Notion blocks (different headings, bulleted lists, quotes, links, embeds, and more)
- In the Tags section, add your first blog post tag (you can add more than one and update them later). Add tags based on a topic or type of content, for example, "Guides” or “Featured”
Hide your master database
One advantage of using Super for your website is that you can hide your master databases and only display the content you want to show using database views. This gives you the flexibility to create different views to help people easily find the content they are looking for.
You can hide your master database by making it a subpage of the homepage you have connected to your Super site, adding it to a toggle on the page, and then adding a custom code snippet (you will need a paid Super site subscription) or the Super Theme Designer to hide the page.
Hide using brown toggles
- Create a ► toggle list block in Notion (type /togglelist) and move your page(-s) inside
- Set the whole toggle block to have a brown background color — click on the “hidden” toggle, and under Color, select Brown background
- Add a custom code snippet below by heading into your Super site dashboard, clicking on Code, and pasting the snippet below in the CSS section
Super will hide any brown Notion blocks on your site using this custom code snippet.
Hide using the Super theme builder:
- Drag the master database page outside the toggle and delete the empty toggle
- Head into your Super site dashboard
- Click Design
- Press either Create a new theme (if you don't have a theme set up yet) or Edit this theme if you already use one
- Head into Layout
- Under Notion page links, press Hide
Note this option will hide all Notion page links on your site.
Create different linked database views
Using linked database views, you can use content from your master database. For a simple setup, add one large database view for all posts with cover photos and a compact one for a select few, like featured or top posts.
Add a Gallery view with cover images
To add a linked Gallery database view that displays a cover image alongside each post:
- Go back to your "My Blog" page, and under your introduction content, type /linked and select Linked view of database
- Under Select data source, click on your "Blogs" master database
- Hover over the Table section on your database and click Rename. Give the current database view a title like "All" or "All posts"
- Click on the more icon (three dots), and under Layout, change it to Gallery
By default, Notion shows a blank cover photo. To finish setting up cover photos:
- Click on the more icon (three dots) of your database view, and under Card preview, select Page cover
- Open one of your blog posts
- Hover over the top section (above the post title) and click on Add cover, and after Notion has loaded a random image, click on Change cover in the same top section
- Select a cover image by linking an image file URL, choosing one from Unsplash gallery, or uploading your own
Add a linked database view with a filter
In the second linked database view, you can show specific posts using a filter:
- Under the first linked database view, create another one (type /linked and select Linked view of database)
- Under Select data source, click on the “Blogs” master database
- Go to Filter, select filter by Tags, and tick one (or more) of your blog tags to feature in this database view
- Hover over the Table section on your database and click Rename. Give this database view a title like "Top posts” or “Featured”
- Click on the more icon (three dots), and under Layout, change it to List for a compact view
Organize your database views
For an easy overview of your blog, you can drag and drop your database views alongside each other using columns:
- Type /column anywhere on your newsletter site and select 2 columns
- Now you can drag each linked database view in its own column
- Use the vertical column separator and drag it to either side — you can drag it to make the Gallery database view bigger
Add headings for your database views
To finish setting up your blog page, you can add titles above each database view using headings:
- First, click the more icon (three dots) next to a database title and select Hide database title — repeat this for both database views you dragged into the columns
- Above the databases, add a title by typing /H1 or /H2 and name it, for example, "All posts"
- Click and drag your title into the first column above the database view
- Repeat the steps above for the second database view by giving a title, like "Top posts" or "Featured”
Publish and sync the blog to your Super site
You have two ways of publishing and syncing your newsletter content to your Super website: setting up an additional database filter or using the manual publishing feature, only available to Pro site users.
Add a filter to show only finished posts
To make sure your blog site only shows publish-ready content, you can set up an additional database filter or checkbox. Doing so will only show posts that meet all filters, like a particular tag and a ticked checkbox:
- In your master database, click to add a new property (plus sign)
- Select Checkbox for a simple checkbox you tick when your blog post is ready for publication
- Click on the Checkbox property in your database to rename it as “Published” (or leave the default title)
To add the new filter to your linked database views:
- Navigate to any linked database views on your blog site
- Click on Add filter
- Select Checkbox and click on Checked
- Repeat the process for all linked database views on your blog site
Each linked database view will now only display posts that fit the criteria of all added filters. When your drafted content is ready for publication, you need to add the correct tags (or any other properties you use for filtering posts in each linked database view) and tick the checkbox.
Enable page properties and Database views
To show properties like the author’s name, the published date, and allow users to see the different views of your posts, you need to enable page properties and database views:
- Head into your Super site dashboard and click on Options
- Enable Page Properties and Database views
Add fancy view switcher buttons
You can add a custom code snippet if you want a more polished look for your property views (when readers click to filter particular categories or topics).
Follow our simple guide here. To add any custom code, you will need a paid Super subscription.
Where to go from here…
- Customize your blog to fit your brand
- Connect a custom domain
- Set up your SEO
Looking for some more technical documentation?
Head over to our technical documentation site that is also built in Super and uses the Aether template.
