DEV Community: Flowershow

Notion vs Markdown: the honest comparison

Asdra — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:16:16 +0000

"Notion vs Obsidian" is the wrong framing — that's app vs app. The real comparison is app vs stack: can a markdown setup give you what Notion gives you, out of files you actually own? Mostly yes. Sometimes better. Occasionally, no.

We ran the full comparison on The Way of Markdown. It's not a hit piece — Notion wins some of these outright. Here's the shape of it.

Notion isn't competing against "markdown" — that's just a format — it's competing against a small stack: Obsidian for the editor, Bases for database-style views over your files, git for sync and history, a publisher for the "share to web" button, and AI tools that read your files directly.

A few categories go one way or the other with no real contest.

Markdown wins wikis and linking (native, not bolted on), offline use (total — the files just sit on your disk), history (a full git log going back to day one), lock-in and exit (there's nothing to export, because nothing was trapped to begin with), and AI on your content (agents work directly in your vault, no API required).

Notion wins real-time co-editing — genuinely good, and git is asynchronous by design so this isn't close. It wins page-level permissions, since repo-level access is the ceiling on the markdown side. And it wins zero-setup polish: sign up versus assembling two or three tools yourself.

Databases are closer than people assume. Notion's relational views are still ahead for heavy use, but Obsidian Bases closed most of the gap this year for lighter use — which covers most people's actual needs.

The trend line matters more than the snapshot. The database gap has been closing from the markdown side, and AI closed the smart-features gap from the other side, almost overnight. Meanwhile Notion's real advantages — real-time editing, granular permissions — come from the same centralized database that creates the lock-in. You can't get one without the other, in either direction.

Full scorecard (14 categories, feature by feature) and the honest "choose X if" breakdown: wayofmarkdown.com/notion-vs-markdown

The Markdown Database Pattern

Asdra — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:13:10 +0000

Your filesystem is already a database. Most tools just don't treat it that way.

That's the core idea behind the Markdown Database Pattern — written up properly on The Way of Markdown, a site we've been contributing to that makes the case for building things on plain markdown instead of locked-in platforms. We think it's a pattern worth more attention, so here's the short version.

Treat a folder of markdown files as a database. Each file is a record. Frontmatter fields are columns. Directories are tables. Tags, wikilinks, and tasks in the body become queryable relations.

Filesystem              Database
──────────────────────────────────
markdown file      →    record
frontmatter field  →    column
directory          →    table
#tag               →    tag relation
[[wikilink]]       →    link relation
- [ ] task         →    task relation

You get portability, version control (git works perfectly on plain text), no framework lock-in, and full queryability. You give up scale and real relational joins — this isn't for millions of records. It's a lightweight database, honest about its limits.

Once you name it, you start seeing it everywhere. Obsidian Bases and Dataview already do versions of this, half-consciously. A team wiki where every page has a status and owner field is one. A blog with date and tags in frontmatter is one — it just doesn't know it yet.

Sweet spot: up to roughly 10k files. Past that, reach for a real database. Below it, this gets you almost everything a database gives you, at a fraction of the complexity, with none of the lock-in.

The full writeup — the complete tradeoff analysis, a worked example with actual queries, how to implement it in a weekend, and the tool (MarkdownDB) that does it for you — is here: wayofmarkdown.com/markdown-database

Turn your Obsidian Vault into a beautiful website with Flowershow!

Theo Bertol — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:11:01 +0000

Hey 👋

If you use Obsidian and have ever wanted to publish your notes as a website, we’ve built something that makes this easy.

Flowershow lets you turn an Obsidian vault into a fast, clean website — perfect for blogs, notes, or digital gardens. And to make publishing simpler, we built an Obsidian plugin that connects your vault directly to Flowershow.

Publish your vault to the web — directly from Obsidian

With the Flowershow Obsidian plugin, you can publish your notes without setting up repositories or dealing with complex workflows.

The idea is simple:

Install the plugin
Connect it to Flowershow
Click Publish

Your notes are uploaded, built, and published as a website — straight from Obsidian.

No Git required.
No command line.
Just write, then publish.

If that sounds useful, you can learn more here:
👉 https://flowershow.app/blog/announcing-obsidian-plugin-4

We’d love to hear what you think 🌸

Flowershow now supports HTML publishing!

Theo Bertol — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:45:36 +0000

Flowershow now supports raw HTML publishing! 🚀

Sometimes converting to Markdown just feels wrong—whether it’s a hand-coded portfolio, a data dashboard, or a custom landing page. You want the file exactly as it is.

The Old Way: Piling HTML into Markdown blocks, fighting layout: plain frontmatter, and hoping the parser didn't break your CSS. It was brittle and frustrating.

The New Way: Drop your .html file into your content folder and publish.

flowershow publish index.html

No configuration needed.
No formatting errors.
Mix-and-match: Keep your docs in Markdown, but use raw HTML for custom landing pages or HTML reports

It just works.

Check out the full announcement:https://flowershow.app/blog/announcing-html-support

Turn your Obsidian vault into dynamic galleries with Obsidian Bases

Theo Bertol — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:26:08 +0000

If you use Obsidian, you probably have "collections" – a folder of books you've read, a directory of project notes, or a list of recipes.

Usually, these notes have metadata (frontmatter) — covers, ratings, dates, tags.

You often want to list them in a nice way, displaying those fields (like a gallery of book covers with ratings), instead of just a text list.

But automatically generating these views on a static site is hard. You often end up manually maintaining a brittle Markdown list (- [[Book A]], - [[Book B]]). It’s tedious, and it breaks the moment you add a file but forget to update the index.

We added Obsidian Bases support to Flowershow to fix this.

filters:
  file.folder == "books"
views:
  - type: cards
    image: cover_image

Flowershow takes that, scans your folder, and renders a beautiful, filterable grid of cards.
It lets you define dynamic views — like Cards or Tables — directly in your Markdown.

Instead of writing a list, you write a query:
Check out our Announcement Blog here: https://flowershow.app/blog/announcing-obsidian-bases-beta

I wanted to publish one Markdown file, not start a project

Theo Bertol — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:46:58 +0000

Most publishing tools assume you’re building something permanent.

But a lot of writing doesn’t look like that.

Sometimes it’s a single Markdown file sitting on your machine. You’ve finished writing, and all you want is a link you can share.

We built a small CLI for that moment.

The Flowershow CLI lets you publish directly from your terminal — without setting up a repo or clicking through a dashboard.

Quick start

npm i -g @flowershow/publish
publish auth login
publish ./my-folder

Done! You'll get a ready to share URL!

If you make changes later:

publish sync ./my-folder

This doesn’t replace UI-based workflows. It’s for people who already live in their editor and terminal and want publishing to feel like part of the same flow.

It’s currently in beta and requires Node.js.
Docs cover the details, or you can explore via publish --help.
Docs here: https://flowershow.app/docs/cli
Blog here: https://flowershow.app/blog/announcing-flowershow-cli

Publishing Markdown shouldn’t be a side project

Ola Rubaj — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:20:59 +0000

A while back we shared a Next.js template - Flowershow - for turning Markdown into a website. It worked well—but it also came with the usual costs: setup, configuration, deployment, and ongoing maintenance.

So we built a new version of Flowershow: an open-source, fully hosted platform for publishing Markdown as a real website.

The focus is simple: write in Markdown, publish, and move on.

With hosted Flowershow you can:

Publish docs, notes, blogs, or small product sites in minutes
Use your own domain and customize the look without touching code
Get built-in features like full-text search and comments out of the box
Skip servers, CI pipelines, Docker, and framework decisions entirely

It works well for:

project documentation
indie product websites
“learning in public” blogs
internal or public knowledge bases / wikis.

Anywhere Markdown already fits, but hosting feels like unnecessary overhead.

If you enjoy writing in Markdown but don’t want publishing to become another thing to maintain, this might be useful:

👉 https://flowershow.app
👀 https://github.com/flowershow/flowershow

We’re building this in the open and will share updates as it evolves.
Feedback, ideas, and rough edges are very welcome. 💐

Publish your digital garden with Flowershow 🌷

Ola Rubaj — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 00:51:12 +0000

What is Flowershow?

Flowershow 🌷 is a free and open-source tool for easily converting your markdown files into an elegant website. It's built on a standard, modern web stack – React, Next.js, and Tailwind and shipped with a basic default theme to get you started with just a few clicks🖱️.

https://flowershow.app/

Following the steps below, or using our tutorial, you can turn your markdown notes into an elegant website and tailor it to your needs.

1. Prepare the content

🚧 Flowershow CLI is not yet supported on Windows
❕ Make sure you have Node.js installed

First, you'll need a folder with some markdown files you'd like to publish. You can use an existing one, e.g. your Obsidian vault. This folder should include at least a single index.md file at the root level, which will be used to generate the home page of your website. If it doesn't exist, Flowershow CLI will create it for you.

To create this folder from scratch, you can do:

mkdir my-digital-garden
cd my-digital-garden
echo 'Hello, world!' > index.md

You can create as many subfolders within your content folder as you want. Its directory tree will be reflected in URL paths on the published website, e.g.: my-digital-garden/blog/hello.md file content will be available under <base-url-of-your-published-website>/blog/hello.

Each folder can have its own index.md file, which will be available under its parent directory path, e.g. my-content/blog/index.md will be available under <base-url-of-your-published-website>/blog.

In order to embed files (e.g. images or pdfs) in your markdown files, you will also need to create a dedicated folder for them in your digital garden directory.

If you're an Obsidian user, you can set this folder as an attachments folder, by right-clicking on it in the sidebar on the left hand side. This way all embedded files will be saved to this folder automatically when you copy them to your notes.

You can create this folder by running:

mkdir my-digital-garden/assets #this can be any other name

If you don't use git version control system to track changes in your digital garden yet, we recommend setting it up. Check GitHub quickstart to learn more.

2. Install Flowershow template

In order to build your beautiful personal website out of your digital garden, you first need to install Flowershow template. This template will be linked to your digital garden after the installation process.

So, let's imagine you have the following folder structure:

some-parent-dir
├── my-digital-garden
│   ├── assets
│   └── index.md
└── ...

If you want to install Flowershow in some-parents-dir you can either:

go to that directory and run npx flowershow@latest install

cd some-parent-dir
npx flowershow@latest install

You'll be asked to confirm if you want to install it in the current directory.

? Create Flowershow project in current directory? Yes

...or you can pass this directory as an argument to the install command.

npx flowershow@latest install some-parent-dir

After running the install command you'll be shown a set of prompts, that will allow you to properly set up Flowershow with your digital garden.

? Path to the folder with your content files
my-digital-garden

? Select a folder with your assets (attachments) (Use arrow keys)
❯ assets
  ──────────────
  I don't need assets folder
  Cancel

🌷 Installing Flowershow template in /home/me/some-parent-dir/.flowershow
⏳ Installing Flowershow dependencies...

At the end you should see .flowershow folder created in the target directory. In our example the folder structure will look like this:

some-parent-dir
├── my-digital-garden
│   ├── assets
│   ├── config.js
│   └── index.md
├── .flowershow
└── ...

Note that config.js and index.md files will be created automatically if they didn't exist in your digital garden folder yet. The config file will allow you to do some basic configurations of your Flowershow app.

(Optional) customize your website

You can now customize your website by wrapping your content in custom layouts, using custom components in you Markdown files, importing data from files and more.

Build your website

You can preview your website locally by running the following command in the directory where .flowershow has been installed:

npx flowershow preview

...or by passing this directory as a command argument:

npx flowershow preview some-parent-dir

After running this command, you will now be able to see your website on http://localhost:3000/ - it will reload every time you make some changes to your content.

If you're ready to publish your site, you can now build it with the following command:

npx flowershow build-static
# or npx flowershow build-static some-parent-dir

It will create a .flowershow/out folder with all the resulting static files.

Feedback🙏

Please take it for a spin and let us know your feedback in the github discussion thread or our new discord chat forum.