Whether out of curiosity or with the intention to build an IMDB-like product, online directories can come in handy especially in today’s economy. From freelancers to independent consultants, it’s critical to have a network you can turn to for professional support and financial success.
For the next two blog posts, we’re detailing in full, how you can build your own version of IMDB without having to code on Bubble—the leading no-code provider today!
On that note, we’ll have to focus on the core features to successfully clone IMDB. For this article and the next, we’re covering how to build a backend portal to add professionals and films to your list, how to build a homepage users can check, how to integrate the search function on your web app, and how to display dynamic content to showcase what you need to in all the right places.
Let’s start!
In this context, we’ll begin by turning to Bubble’s visual design tool to help form your app’s user-interface. Since the goal is to replicate IMDB, our core pages will be a homepage, a showcase section, and a portal for admins to update and add content.
Establishing your database
When you’ve successfully established your web app’s UI, you can proceed to build the necessary data fields to make your platform work. We’ll depend on these fields to seamlessly power the logic of your app.
Fortunately, building a powerful database with Bubble is quick and easy. Begin by jotting down every top-level data type, then supplement the appropriate fields in every category.
Because we’re patterning after IMDB, a media-driven directory, you can pattern after the following fields and data types:
Data type: Films
Fields:
- Title
- Plot
- Image
- Category
- Director
- Actors
- Duration
- Release year
- Rating
- User-generated reviews (list of reviews).
Data type: User
Fields:
- Name
- Photo
- Submitted review (list of reviews)
Data type: Reviews
Fields
- Rating
- Review content
- Reviewed film
(source: https://bubble.io/blog/build-imdb-no-code/)
Adding content to the platform
You don’t have to be a big film buff to frequently visit IMDB. The platform hosts a ton of information about movies, casts, and the production professionals behind these masterpieces. As such, the first thing we’ll want to build on our web app is the ability to add content to our IMDB clone.
That said, let’s start with the back-end portal that allows admins to supplement their platform with content.
By creating a special portal dedicated to store information and upload content, you simplify your process of adding content to your movie database.
You can mix up input fields on your upload page to align the appropriate data for every content you add. Once you add an “add film” button, you can trigger a workflow that supplements this new information and stores it in your database.
For your workflow here, you can choose “create a new thing” and set it to “film.”
Once done, match the data fields under “film” to the appropriate page elements, ensuring that everything is connected seamlessly.
Previewing dynamic content
When you’ve uploaded a host of movies, you can proceed to display your catalog to a page users can access.
With the repeating group feature, you can preview your catalog of dynamic data sourced from your database.
Tip: because repeating groups are defaulted as vertical, manually reconfigure it to horizontal for your IMDB clone.
When developing your web app, we can optimize several repeating groups to differentiate the various film categories on your homepage.
Begin by linking a data type in your database before supplementing content to your repeating group. This helps determine which content to give a preview to.
Naturally, the “films” in your database is what we’ll want to display. Here, the repeating group will display all of your movie content, and not only those that are relevant.
To remedy this in the repeating group, we’ll have to set an additional constraint, like searching for films that contain the word “horror” or “comedy.”
At this point, Bubble will only display the appropriate content under each category. As expected, your movie genres can be as many as you want. You just need to repeat the process.
When you’ve successfully set the repeating group, you can proceed to add dynamic content elements that you’d like to give a preview to in every cell. For this IMDB-like web app, you can put a featured image, release date, the movie title, and the rating.
And just like that, we’re already halfway through our movie directory web app!
Again, what you want to create may not be related to films and cinema, but being able to build an online directory, especially in today’s context, is definitely something you can commodify.
Driven entrepreneurs will do whatever they can to build a network and access pools of relevant circles.
If a web app like this is something you see yourself building, hit us up and we’ll help you out!
(Source and screenshots from https://bubble.io/blog/build-shopify-clone-no-code/)
