No-code apps and setting up Adalo

What "no-code" actually means

For a long time, building a phone app meant writing code line by line in a language most people never learn. No-code and low-code platforms change that. They are visual tools where you drag and drop the pieces of an app, connect them together, and get a working web or mobile app out the other end.

The difference between the two is a matter of degree. Low-code still lets a professional developer drop into real code when they need to; no-code aims to need none at all. Both share the same idea: a friendly graphical interface where you assemble ready-made building blocks instead of typing instructions.

This opens app-building to people who are not programmers. The industry even has a name for them, "citizen developers", the office administrator, the small-business owner, or the student who has an idea for an app but no background in software. In this course you are exactly that person, and the tool you will learn is called Adalo.

Why people reach for it

The first reason is speed. When you are not writing every line by hand, an app that once took weeks can take an afternoon. You assemble it, preview it, adjust it, and repeat until it does what you want.

The second reason is reach. No-code puts real problem-solving into the hands of people who understand the problem but were previously stuck waiting for a developer. Someone who runs a small tour business knows exactly what their booking app should do, and now they can build a first version themselves.

None of this replaces professional developers. It frees them from repetitive work so they can spend their time on the harder, more valuable parts of a product. For a beginner, though, the point is simpler: you can build something real today.

Meet Adalo: components, actions, and a database

Adalo is a no-code platform for building web and mobile apps. You design once and can publish to the App Store, to Google Play, and to the web. Two of those three cost money, and it is worth knowing that now rather than at the end: publishing to the App Store and Google Play needs a paid plan, while publishing to the web on an Adalo subdomain is included in the free one. It handles the polished parts most apps need, such as lists of content, Google Maps, payments through Stripe, and simple charts.

Almost everything in Adalo comes down to three ideas. Hold on to these, because the rest of the course is really just these three getting deeper.

• Components are the building blocks you place on a screen: text, buttons, forms, images, and lists. If you can see it in the app, it is a component.
• Actions are what happens when someone uses a component. Tap a button and an action decides what the app does next, such as moving to another screen or saving a record.
• The database is where the app's information lives. Think of an Excel spreadsheet: rows of data your app can show to users, plus the data users type in and you want to keep.

A good way to start any app is to ask three questions in this order: which screens do I need, what should each screen do, and what data does it need to show or save. Those three questions map straight onto components, actions, and the database.

A tour of the Adalo editor

To make this concrete, imagine you are building a small Trips app, a place where people post trips and others can join them. This app will follow us through the whole course. Here is the editor you will be working in.

• Canvas is the large workspace in the middle where you lay out the screens of your app. You scroll and zoom around it just like a map.
• The Add Panel opens from the plus button. This is where you pick components and new screens to drop onto the Canvas.
• Branding is where you set your app's colours once, so every component using those colours updates together.
• Screens lists every screen in your app and every component inside each one, which is handy once the app grows.
• The Database tab on the left is where you view and edit your app's collections of data. You will live here in the next lesson.
• Settings holds the app's name and icon, and the option to copy or delete the app. Analytics has its own panel next to it.
• Publish is where you eventually send the app to the stores or set its web address.

Along the top bar, the middle shows the name of the app you are editing; clicking it lets you switch apps or create a new one. Every app also gets its own web address in the form subdomain.adalo.com/app-name, and you choose the subdomain part yourself.

In this first session students practised right on the workshop computers, opening Adalo and clicking through these panels until the layout felt familiar. That is the goal here too: not to build anything finished yet, just to know where things are.

Check yourself

1. In your own words, what is the difference between no-code and traditional programming, and who is a "citizen developer"?
2. Adalo rests on three basic concepts. Name them, and say what each one is responsible for in an app.
3. You have just built a rough first screen and want a friend without an Adalo account to try it and tell you what they think. Which top-bar button do you use, and why not the other one?