One of the most humbling experiences working on Pory is being able to build a place for our community using none other than our very own platform. Communities are the next big thing in the startup world - it only takes one peek into Pory’s Slack community to acknowledge how supportive and grateful people from all over the world are. It’s honestly what fuels our ambition and keeps us going as we strive to build a product that is going to make a dent in this world.
In this article, I’m going to show you exactly how we manage our entire community on Airtable and how it powers our community site (built on Pory). We even have simple automations set up to keep our slack community engaged, so be sure to read until the very end!
Airtable for Communities
If your information lives everywhere, your community can’t get anywhere. Airtable has been our bread and butter for managing all of Pory’s community data. From sharing tutorials and what’s new to allowing people to sign up as a member to share projects, request features and track support tickets. Each table in the base neatly collects and organizes information about a community regardless of size.
The missing link? A way to display all this useful information back to the community!
Pory for Frontend
Pory is a no-code platform that works hand-in-hand with Airtable! Once connected, you can pull data from any Airtable and start building a space for your community.
Pory also supports user accounts which means your members can keep their profile up to date and see their own information like projects! For our own community, we’ve turned each table from the Airtable base above into its own page.
Community Show Case
Since Pory is a no-code tool for building apps, we created a gallery to show off all the apps our community has built and kindly shared. The apps are stored in the Showcase table and are linked to the member in the Users table using a linked record. This means members can update their project from their account page at anytime without hassling community managers!
What’s New
We had no idea when we first started, but turns out people love to keep up to date on what’s new! Our Youtube updates might be lagging behind, but thanks to the ability to create Airtable views (filter features by the status done), members can keep up with all the latest changes without bombarding support. We know how busy everyone can get! Fun fact, this page retrieves information from two different tables :)
Members Directory
This is arguably one of the most important pages, especially in the context of no-code. Members are always looking for experts to hire and kind souls for help. A members directory is a great way to introduce and connect like-minded people together. Who knows, maybe a wedding might even come out of it!
For privacy reasons, we’ve put our members directory behind a log in wall. Just imagine a directory of beautiful people with big non-creepy smiles the moment you create an account and log in. Once you sign up, your profile will be automatically added into the users table (Airtable screenshot above) and shown in the members directory.
Feature requests
We can’t emphasize how much we love using Airtable for managing Pory’s features. The kanban view works wonders for project management. If you’re not familiar with a kanban board, just imagine three columns (swim lanes) “Planned”, “Doing” and “Done”. In fact, you can go into our features page and filter by those statuses.
Our feature page is automatically updated as we move features across the columns into different statuses. We even have automations set up to message the slack community whenever something new is released! 🥳
There’s so much more we can do!
We’ve only touched the surface on what’s possible with Pory and Airtable, but hopefully it’s enough to give you a glimpse on how you can create an app for your community (engineering resources optional).
Build your own community on Pory today! All plans come with a 14 day free trial :)
