Show HN: Sortabase, a collaborative, visual database builder for communities | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Sortabase, a collaborative, visual database builder for communities

sortabase.com

116 pointsTrayja-Peter35 comments

We built Sortabase to let communities collaborate on visual databases of the things they know and care about.

The fields of each database are defined by its moderators using a no-code drag-n-drop interface, and the resulting database is easy to search, filter, sort, and contribute to.

The platform is 100% free to use - take a look, and feedback is appreciated!

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We're doing something a bit similar at DoltHub, where databases are managed with a GitHub like workflow, and where you get the pros and cons of that kind of system. Our hospital price database (work ongoing daily) is community built: https://www.dolthub.com/repositories/dolthub/transparency-in... (context: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NifwgKHBCeF35ZRZsfpgg4bE...)

What’s up with the name? A ‘dolt’ is a stupid person, at least in the English language.

“git” is also a stupid person - and dolt is git for data

My mate used to say "git" to say something is fine/good (to him).

That's just the British pronunciation of 'perfect'.

Yes, but English wasn't our first language back then (in ~2005).

We're trying to reclaim the word

On HN months ago, I made a list [1] on publishing small databases, and I remember that I could not find a good service under "List sharing" (maybe one). Yours fills that slot perfectly.

I have some suggestions: For initiating the DB, offering import (csv/sheets...) would help creators jump in. Then, for collaboration, you could offer the option to add without any account at all (just send the "under review" form to the moderators), or maybe also add more signup alternatives.

As for monetization, I suggest in the future you limit only "private" DBs (= me and other moderators) , so people can still create unlimited public ones (good for spreading the word).

Good luck!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34561292

Right, maybe Airtable is to Slack as Sortabase is to Discord

I remember that post! I had commented on it, back when this project was still very early and using a different name.

I agree with all your suggestions, and we've considered most of them. Importing CSVs presents some challenges, particularly with trying to infer the type and valid values of each column.

Since you did not address the monetization suggestion; I hope that there will be some mechanism to prevent open DBs to just become closed/paywalled over night. If such a premium content is implemented, similar to free software there should be clear limits to how an initiator can take the work of volunteer collaborators and privatize it.

Not sure if viable, but I would much rather prefer a kind of donation system with some kickback to valued collaborations.

This feels like a combination of Airtable (before the push to be a no-code app platform) and Reddit. This seems way better than the public Google Sheets that make their way around the latter site.

I'm curious though. How do you plan to make money from this project (premium subscription option, affiliate links for product-focused databases, etc.)? Will it remain free to use?

Regardless, it seems like an interesting project!

It will always be free to use; affiliate links for product-focussed databases is a strong possibility

Smart, seems like a great way to make some money on affiliate commissions and provide a useful product to the creators and the end users at the same time. Nice!

Finally, a good source of penguin repellent. Now I can get rid of the penguins in my basement and get my herring back!

[*] https://www.sortabase.com/PenguinRepellent

This is so beautiful. Lost it at Marv

What's the license on the data? Needs grid view and export/api.

Is there a way to view each group of cards as a list? Just like what Airtable or Retable has for example?

Not at the moment, but I'm very open to adding new views to the UI!

The website looks really good!

For the search criteria filters, are you using a library or did you make that yourself?

The closest thing I can think of is

https://react-select.com/home

We're using Ant Design

https://ant.design/

I like it,

Can the list of databases also be a database? like can it have the same interface and sort able features?

Also what does a user get i they login/sign up? is that just to create databases or do you get a subscribe feature or something?

Looks super cool. I am working on something similar.

Thanks :) Care to share your project?

very cool. UI to compare items is a little clunky. Would like to select multiple items to compare from the main grid view. Right now it jumps me to the dedicated compare screen as soon as I select one item, and then I have to search to add new ones. I want to filter a list through facets and select a subset of the items on that list for detailed comparison.

This is pretty cool, except that every database looks like a commerce site. It might be good to have some different layouts available that look less commercial?

There are some databases that have entries with a long text description. Putting a snippet of that up front would make that clearer. Also, a single-column layout would look more like a blog.

Compare with an archive page on Substack.

wow this looks amazing. Do you mind shedding some light on how you built this? especially how you organize taxonomy and product metadata for each category

I am working on an e-commerce platform that would benefits a lot from your experience here

The taxonomy and metadata, as you put it, is defined by the moderators/community of each database. We just give them drag-and-drop tools to do so :)

ah i meant to ask how it was designed in the backend

I won't get too deep into our architecture, but needless to say letting users dynamically edit/add/remove fields in their databases is not easy. We use Postgres + Prisma as our ORM, and I'm fairly happy with its DX re: handling this level of complexity

I would put everything in JSON(b) column since you're using Postgres anyway....

This is the thing that reddit should have done years ago. Great product.

edit: Dumb question. deleted

Do you mind elaborating? I don't get how they're comparable. Vetted.ai uses AI to rank products based on user reviews and check prices across retailers. OP's project is a community-based, collaborative database (almost a fusion of Reddit and Airtable) where anyone can contribute to a database, which also isn't limited to products.

This is really cool

Reply on news.ycombinator.com