The One Page Every Notion Workspace Needs

Whether you are someone who uses Notion to run your online business or to organize your personal life, the one page that you absolutely need to have in your workspace is a backend or master databases page.

In yesterday’s article, we did a deep dive on master databases and why they’re important for adding structure to your Notion workspace.

Today, I’m going to walk you through what a backend page is, why you need it and how to set one up in your workspace from scratch.

What is a backend page?

It’s a page that houses all of your master databases.

Why do you need it?

Having this page in your workspace has 2 primary benefits:

1. You'll always know exactly where your master databases are, so you won’t be wasting time looking through nested pages to find that one database you know exists but can't remember where you left it.

2. If you’re building out your Notion workspace from scratch, having all of the databases open on one page while you’re building makes creating and editing databases easier and faster.

Characteristics of my master databases

You can customize your master databases on this page as you see fit, but for mine, there are 3 features that I implement.

• All view - it’s always helpful, especially when building, to have a view that shows all properties without any of them being hidden or with active filters.

• I make sure that each of these databases are set to only load 10 pages so larger databases don’t take up too much space on the page.

• I hide page icons on this view as well, just to keep everything minimal and uncluttered.

How do you set up your master databases page?

1. Create a new page and title it Backend or Master Databases.

2. Create a template that can be re-used for future master databases.

   • Create a H2 toggle

     1. Insert an inline database in the toggle

        1. Set the existing view as your “All” view that shows all properties without any filters

        2. In the database view options (3 dot menu on the left of the blue “New” button), go to Load Limit and select 10 pages.

        3. Hide page icons in the layout setting if you want (database view options > layout > toggle off ‘show page icon’).

3. Create a button titled ‘New master database’ using the slash command menu and place the H2 toggle inside.

Now, you’ll be able to create new master databases much faster.

That’s it! A simple page that saves you time while building and keeps your Notion workspace organized.

My master databases page