Getting started

This section takes a look at the theory and methods around planning your first app. We take a look at how you can break your app idea into features and versions, how you can plan out your database structure and finally how you make it ready for users with a user interface.

If you've never built an app before, we recommend starting here.

Your Bubble account can hold as many applications as you want, and this section explores how you can organize your apps.

Bubble contains all the tools you need to create awesome web applications, all wrapped into one editor. Learn how to navigate it in this article.

Your Bubble app will automatically be assigned a unique URL when it is created, such as https://my-bubble-application.bubbleapps.io.

As you get close to launch, you may want to move it to your own domain, such as https://www.my-bubble-application.com.

Each Bubble app comes with a set of general settings. This article goes through each different category of settings.

Elements are the things that you place on a page to display data and let your users interact with your app. Whether you want to create an elaborate presentation page with images and animations or a simple signup form, it's all done by combining different elements in a way that your users find useful and visually pleasing.

Bubble offers a lot of different elements serving different purposes and this article series covers them all.

Each element that you add to your page has a default styling applied to it. In short, styling refers to what your elements look like, and this is done by changing styling settings such as:

Background color, gradient or image
Border
Shadow
Font
Transitions

Bubble also features ways to save styling settings to help you maintain and update how your app looks efficiently.

Responsive design is a method that gives your users a great experience no matter what kind of device they are using to access your app. Bubble features a responsive engine that lets you control every aspect of your app's responsiveness in the same visual editor that you use to build your pages. It uses a grid-based layout to change the appearance of the page depending on the screen size and orientation of the device.

The component library is a collection of pre-built User Interface (UI) components that can be dragged and dropped onto your page to help you build beautiful interfaces faster. These UI components are fully responsive and are made up of containers, visual elements, and form inputs that can be individually customized once added to your page. Each component is a fully independent unit, but can be connected to each other or other parts of your app by adding workflows and data.

Many users have a background from Figma. Bubble has a tool for importing your Figma design into Bubble, maintaining style attrbiutes such as colors, fonts, shadows, etc. This article covers how the import process works.

The database manages all the dynamic data that both you and your users have added. You can create, modify, view, and delete data as needed and run bulk operations to make major updates.

Data in the database is stored securely on Bubble's servers.

Bubble offers integrated tools within the editor and your app for handling file and image uploads and storage.

Static data in Bubble is defined as data that requires your app to be re-deployed to update and cannot be changed by your application's users (unlike dynamic and temporary data).

This is useful for saving data that you need to re-use in your app, but that doesn't change very often, such as strings of text and options in a list.

Sometimes you'll need to store some information temporarily in your application. They can be considered variables and are not in any permanent storage like the database, but live for as long as they are needed.

This is useful for holding some information while the user is still one the same page and for navigation.

Bubble has a built-in feature to handle user accounts. In other words, your users can create and log in to their account purely with built-in tools that are secure, efficient and easy to set up.

To understand Bubble, is useful to understand the difference between things happening on the page, and things happening on Bubble's server. This article takes a theoretical look at how the two are different – and how they work together constantly to make your app work.

Workflows in Bubble are sequences of actions that automate your app's operations. They trigger in response to events such as a button click or page load, allowing you to create dynamic and interactive applications. In short, they are what makes your app do something.

Dynamic expressions are like "live" formulas that update in real-time based on user input, database updates and other changes in your app. They can fetch data, change and combine texts, calculate numbers and dates and a lot of other things.

Conditions in Bubble are the rules you set to make your application react to different scenarios. They define the "if this, then that" logic in your app, controlling how elements behave, look or function based on different variables, like user inputs or data changes.

Navigation in Bubble is the way you manage the flow between different pages or parts of your app. It involves creating links, setting up redirects, or loading different groups or popups on a single page.

One of Bubble's big strengths is the ability to add up to 40 collaborators to your projects. Collaborators are registered Bubble users that you can give access to the editor in a specific app so that you can work on it together.

Bubble's version control system lets you divide the development of your project into independent parts, so that you and other editors with access to the project can iterate on one part of the app without impacting other parts. This helps you simultaneously progress multiple streams of work and stay on top of the changes made as each goes from development to testing to deployment.

Every part of Bubble has a built-in commenting system that lets you add notes to it. For example, you can use commenting to describe what a particular workflow, element or data type is for. This helps you remember important details in your app, and makes it simpler to collaborate with other developers.

Bubble offers multiple tools for maintaining a healthy, secure and performant database. This article series takes a look at how you copy database versions, maintain backups and run bulk operations.

As your app scales, it's important to stick to some best practices to make sure it keeps performing well. This article series explores useful tips, as well as looking at some of the technical soft and hard limits in Bubble's different features.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the art of setting up a web page in a way that makes search engines give it a high ranking in its search results. In this section, we'll explore whether this is important for your app, and different ways to prepare your app for the search engine algorithms.

Every app needs to be tested and sometimes debugged both before it's published, whenever you add new features and to find the root cause of any issues that come up in the meantime. Bubble gives you tools to preview, test and debug your app isolated from the live version.

API Workflows are scheduled in a log where they can later be cancelled before they run if needed. Bubble's API Workflow Scheduler lets you show all the scheduled workflows and pause or cancel them.

By using what's called an API connection, your application can fetch data and execute commands in external software systems and vice versa.

Bubble's plugin store contains thousands of plugins that extend the platforms core feature set. This can add new elements to your page, connect to external services, do complex calculations and a lot more.

Sometimes you'll need to connect to an external database to make the most of your Bubble app. The SQL Database Connector Plugin is a handy tool that allows you to connect to databases like:

Postgres
MySQL
Microsoft SQL

By running SQL queries from within Bubble, you can access information or trigger actions.

Many apps will be handling sensitive information on behalf of its users. Our article series on Security shows you how you keep data safe, set up secure connections with external systems and avoid both malicious attacks and accidental data leaks.

The sub-app feature sets up a relationship between a “main app” and one or more “sub applications” and makes it easier to push any changes from the main app to its sub apps, while all main and sub apps have their own database. This is especially useful for certain ideas that involve setting up different (sub/)domains for different clients, which is common in SaaS applications.

The Bubble engine is evolving all the time - on a typical workday, we'll have multiple code rollouts representing any combination of bug fixes, infrastructure improvements, new features, and more. In this article, we'll look at the different options available for applying these updates.

Bubble is not only a no-code platform, but a complete hosting solution that automatically scales as needed. In this article series we'll cover what exactly is included and how the system is designed to scale seamlessly.

When you're developing on Bubble, it's essential to get familiar with different compliance frameworks. They're not just a checklist; they're about building trust, ensuring your users' privacy, and meeting all the necessary legal requirements.

In this article series, you'll learn about some of the top compliance frameworks and how they fit into your app's development on Bubble.

Dive in to understand how our enterprise solutions can enable your organization's digital transformation.

How to read the user manual

Manual sections

Design

Data

Logic

Maintenance

Integrations

Infrastructure

Bubble for Enterprise

Additional resources and getting help

How to read the user manual

Manual sections

Getting started

Design

Data

Logic

Maintenance

Integrations

Infrastructure

Bubble for Enterprise

Additional resources and getting help

Getting started