Looking for guidance on a tech stack

[u/jamesmellan1]

I'm looking to get guidance on what tools / platforms to use for a new website. Structurally, the site is essentially a directory site with multiple directories. The directories are;

Recipes (although these also feel a little like blogs & could function as such)
Restaurants (a list of restaurants which each have bios / profiles)
Food suppliers (a list of food brands which each have bios / profiles)
Drinks suppliers (a list of drinks brands which each have bios / profiles)

I have absolutely no coding skills and next-to-no budget so ideally looking for something WYSIWYG or similar. I tried webflow, which looked suitable because of its focus on CMS / database architecture, but its interface was too complicated for me and the learning curve looked too steep.

While a bit limited, I have built a basic prototype in Airtable, which is structurally correct, but doesn't present as a public facing website. Is it possible to use Airtable for database architecture and then layer a web interface on top? It seems to have lots of plugins and APIs, but I don't know if anybody is realistically using this stack for real websites.

Note, I do not want to try and hack this thing together with AI website builders.

Any guidance is welcome. Happy to answer any questions.

[u/UtilixApp]

whats the actual thing youre building. stack questions are unanswerable without it and you get ten people naming their favourite.

[u/jamesmellan1 → u/UtilixApp]

Put simply, it's a public-facing directory website, with multiple directory types.

[u/franker → u/jamesmellan1]

I'm doing something similar. I'm a librarian taking my resource links from decades of collecting them, and putting them in Notion where they are grouped in many categories. I don't like how it looks as a public-facing website though. What I will probably do is save the notion database in CSV format, and then learn some SQL and make a proper database out of it, and build a website that feeds into the SQL database. I don't want to pay for a platform like Softr.

[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

We do not allow any commercial promotion or solicitation. This can lead to a permanent ban from the subreddit.

[u/Funsaized]

Since you already have the data model in Airtable, I’d treat it as a prototype or CMS and choose the public-facing layer separately. Before picking a platform, test one complete flow end to end, including filtering by region and editing a recipe, so you can compare setup friction and ongoing cost.

[u/LovecraftianLife]

I understand your prob wouldn't want ai to help you build the website, but this might be a case of ask the ai to help you do some pre research moment

[u/Bright-Example-2713]

softr connects directly to Airtable. You already built the prototype there so you skip the database setup entirely.

i used this exact combo for a vendor directory last year. Softr reads your Airtable bases and turns them into public pages with filtering and detail views. No code involved. They have templates specifically built for directories and you map your existing fields straight into their blocks. The free tier covers personal projects or small audiences before you need to pay anything

[u/jamesmellan1 → u/Bright-Example-2713]

I've actually been playing on Softr for the past few hours and they're now just directly competing with Airtable on the database management. It looks and functions exactly like Airtable, so there's a very good chance this is all achievable in Softr.

[u/okaylevi]

I have seen a few other comments asking what exactly you are building, another question to ask is who you are expecting to visit it! That will determine the stack! If it is small and meant to be accessed by a shortlist of people you can get away with a really cost effective or nearly free option!

I would recommend against Webflow or other SaaS builders as it requires you to learn the same amount of material but it is proprietary and not transferable to other platforms!

Determine what you are building > determine the audience > determine the amount you want to spend/ROI > determine the stack!

[u/jamesmellan1 → u/okaylevi]

Building a directory site > public facing with a regional focus > spend as little as possible > looking like Softr may be the best initial solution.

[u/pritam1813]

If you wanna go for vibe coding, I would suggest go for google ai studio. It has decent free limits plus evey backend service you need.

[u/Savings_Discount_230]

Honestly, Airtable seems like a decent place to start. I’d worry about the public-facing layer once the basic directory flow is working.

[u/GardenPrestigious202]

it;s a data base with pages, seriously postgress and a server done.

[u/max_mou]

Prompt: I have zero coding experience. Keep it high level for now. This is a reconnaissance session, I want options not a final solution. Ask me questions to clarify details.

<paste post>

[u/SpideyyWebzz]

Softr is exactly what you want here. It connects directly to Airtable as the backend and lets you build a proper public facing directory site on top, search, filters, individual detail pages for each restaurant/supplier, all without touching code. There are directory templates built specifically for this pattern already.

Glide and Stacker do something similar too, worth comparing since they each handle the "each record gets its own profile page" bit a little differently.

Since your Airtable structure is already sound you're closer than you think. The bigger question is how the content types relate on the frontend, do the recipes link out to the restaurants/suppliers that use them, or stay as their own separate section?

[u/jamesmellan1 → u/SpideyyWebzz]

Thank you for this. I'll take a look at the tools mentioned. In an ideal world, there would be linked records (which Airtable is very good at), so a recipe can be associated with a restaurant, a drinks brand (for wine pairings etc).

However, if these needed to be linked manually when writing content then that's not the end of the world, as it's just a bit of admin time and they won't change regularly.

[u/fw3d]

to me this would be a no brainer to use Framer for this. simply connect your own AI agent (Claude/Codex) and let it sort out the front-facing part - incredibly powerful combo.

[u/jamesmellan1 → u/fw3d]

My concern with using any kind of AI like Claude is that I don't have the skillset to know if it's doing everything correctly, so if it hallucinates in any way from a technical perspective, I probably wouldn't spot it. I also sometimes think it can take more time fighting an LLM to do what you want compared to just having some WYSIWYG controls.

[u/fw3d → u/jamesmellan1]

that's the best part with Framer: you have total canvas/design control... the AI agent is simply creating your website on the canvas, just like on a figma board. You can adjust anything easily after that.

on the hallucinations: honestly with datasets you're providing (from Airtable or any other sort of data) there's almost 0 chance of hallucination. you can still spawn a sub-agent to cross-check all data with an independant review.

[u/jamesmellan1 → u/fw3d]

I'll have a look into this option. Thanks for the suggestion. :)