10 missing features - Webflow VS Wordpress Blogging/CMS system

VS - During most sales meetings (Or calls), the customer will ask “What the difference between Webflow and WordPress?” (OR why Webflow and not Wordpress) + Most sites need a blog (Drive traffic).

10 Popular missing patterns (True to April 2020)

1/10. Category post count ==> missing:
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2/10. Search Blog (Not the entire site) missing:
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3/10. Archive posts by month/year missing:
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4/10. Numeric pagination missing:


5/10. Nested categories (show tags inside post pagelist) missing
22/04/20: Update - this feature shipped:


6/10. Next/Prev post - missing
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7/10. Comment on posts - missing
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8/10. Scheduled Posts - missing
05/05/20: Update - this feature in beta :slight_smile:
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9/10. Filter posts by category (Editor) - missing


10/10. Image resizer (Editor) -or- some way to auto-resize large images - missing

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Some Minor/Micro ideas:

  • Support auto URL slugs for Arabic/Hebrew and so on missing
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  • Improve the rich text editor + Better copy/paste support from word

  • Extra social share buttons like Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter, WhatsApp, email (For non-dev users)
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Please add more ideas if you have one.

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“Though it mostly replaces Wordpress today, Webflow has room to expand into new areas of development beyond websites, says partner Arun Mathew,”

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Not so fast - when you to much time explain to clients “mmm sorry this is not possible bla bla” it’s harder to compete (I didn’t even mention a Multilingual blog and “mega” features).

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If Webflow could find a way to allow 3rd party developers to build plugins in the same way that Wordpress does, imagine how much faster Webflow could become a fully viable alternative. I guess this would be much harder for Webflow due to the difference in architecture between how Webflow and Wordpress sites work.

Despite not providing any official support for this, there are already quite a few companies that have popped up with Webflow integrations. Imagine if Webflow provided an official way to build plugins… personally I would be all over that.

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Yes and No. Custom Plugins = The same issue/idea solved by 200 plugins and each plugin with separate support/pricing/bugs/learning-curve/pricing (Salad).

This idea for example:
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It is a simple javascript length of a list of objects (4-5 lines of JS code) - Not mega-mega feature with complex logic. The same idea for next/prev (Basic script loop throw list).

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It’s not ideal, but if you need it then I have a solution for next/prev article. It’s not the most elegant but it works.

I understand that this may not be necessarily looking for solutions though, but to highlight what isn’t yet offered natively :slight_smile:

No it’s not ideal. But things aren’t improving in a hurry either.

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Why do you have a solution and they don’t have one? :slight_smile: This is ± summarize the problem:

I know to solve this issue by code.

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Hey, completely understand. Definitely agree, it’s a simple (I assume) feature!

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For blogs, Webflow is not at all a great product unfortunately. There are SO MANY missing simple things. The rich text editor itself is painful to use. Adding images to a blog post is so infuriatingly stupid it’s a wonder they even added it (they come out as full sized and shuffles everything in the editor away). The performance is dreadful, too. Not having optimizing or resizing on images in the CMS is insane, and they even say they have it on their page (not true).

That said - nested categories/CMS items is right around the corner, as is scheduling posts. You can sort on categories in the editor if you hit this button:

2020-04-19 15_42_41-Atari stjal 10NES.docx - Word

Webflow isnt’ a competitor to the blog aspect of Wordpress, not by a long shot today. It’s a one-sided battle. If they really want to compete then they start implementing the basics instead of focusing on the shiny stuff.

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The “problem” the logic/structure of posts also useful for:

  • Real estate site (Next/prev + search + counter of each category + resize images and so on)
  • Store locator
  • Portfolios
  • Courses
  • Products reviews
  • Stores
  • And other sites with a lot of generated pages

Unfortunately, this issue not only related to blog and article (Simply a blog is something that most sites share).

Align line with the basics

Webflow could be at least as WordPress core (Without any mega plugins) Why not?

I do not fully agree. Why so many users like medium.com blogging systems? (Very Friendly UI). WordPress does not own this area (Bloggers are looking for simple solutions that will allow them to focus on writing).

I think we do agree. I’m saying Wordpress is much better at the blogging aspect than Webflow.

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In theory this makes sense to me, but in a practical way how does Webflow implement this without becoming the “update” sh$t show that wordpress plugins are? Not having to worry about plugins breaking my site is a core reason I prefer webflow over wordpress.

I personally think the better path is not necessarily plugins but to better utilize the community of cloneable makers. Making a better ecosystem to source cloneables than the current one. Better categorization and of course search. There is so much potential there that is under utilized because it is so difficult to find what you need when you need it. It’s like we have direct access to open source content specifically for our tool and it is just thrown together and sorted by popularity or recent. There is so much more that could come from it.

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I don’t think this would be ideal either btw, but many aspects of Webflow simply aren’t improving IMO. This is totally my opinion, but Webflow seems to release shiny features that provide little relief to my day to day bugbears (this topic was discussed at length in this slightly heated thread). If plugins provided a way to relieve these, then personally I am OK with being responsible for the plugins I chose to implement on my sites. Some people may not want to troubleshoot this sort of thing, in which case they wouldn’t have to use plugins. It’s totally optional.

Cloneable sites full of custom JavaScript to work around Webflow’s limitations? I disagree, these would lead to a total mess. At least with plugins / extensions developers can centrally manage their code bases in a sane way. Imagine the difficultly in trying to support templates where you have no idea what the end user has changed.

I am simply floating the idea that if Webflow opened up to community developers more we might see some of the annoying limitations addressed, while Webflow themselves continue to focus on whatever they deem priority for their own developers. It’s pretty clear from the Wishlist than Webflow and the community’s priorities often don’t line up.

Look at the success that Memberstack has been, despite Webflow not providing any official integration pathways they have managed to solve a major Webflow limitation. This has helped the community immensely. It would be great to see the barriers to integration come down to encourage more of this!

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A few other blogging needs I’d really, really like to see:

  • “Save as draft” as default when creating a new item. Accidentally publishing something when other people are writing blog posts is a nightmare.
  • Simple desking tools. It simply does not exist in any form today. You have to hotwire something yourself and it’s less than adequate.
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Yet another couple of weird things when dealing with blogging on Webflow:

  • Publishing items doesn’t updated the RSS feed (!!!). Only publishing the entire site does. What an utter catastrophy. Come on Webflow.
  • The RSS feed will have the custom subdomain url even if your page is hosted elsewhere, meaning your RSS links will point to https://subdomain.actualsite.com/article instead of https://www.actualsite.com/article breaking everything.
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But they do…

This is the OG third-party integration marketplace…

Examples:

  1. Memberstack
  2. Jetboost
  3. Weglot

Sure, if you want to manipulate the DOM at load time. There are many situations where this isn’t ideal. This is exactly why Memberstack can’t dish up secure content from Webflow for example.

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I agree! I mean Im trying to blog on webflow but i need to design everything my self (Which i love how much i can customize it but i think for blogging there should be a better flow) , adding stuff to large and long articles is hectic in webflow. Adding custom sections inside blogs is not easy in webflow.