Hey JT, I’ve been struggling with this exact same problem. So far I’ve found four approaches that work OK with tags. All of the require work and compromise, however I thought I’d summarize them here.
#1 - USE MULTIPLE REFERENCE FIELDS, INSTEAD OF A SINGLE MULTI-REFERENCE
Ditch the multi-ref field, and replace it we 3 reference fields to your Tag table. Tag1, Tag2, and Tag3. In your card, you program, style and color each them separately.
PRO - This sorts out your main view problem smoothly
CON - the CMS hosting plan only allows 5 references per table total. Depending on your table design, you may need to upgrade to Business hosting to get 10 references.
CON - if you need your Tag Collection page to display the associated tagged items, it gets a bit awkward because there is no “or” filtering in a Collection List. Therefore you cannot say "show me all cars where Tag1 = the current tag, OR Tag2 = the current tag, etc. Instead, if you have 3 Tag fields, you need 3 collection lists, each filtered to a different Tag. This munts sorting options, but at least you get the right list of items.
#2 - DITCH REFERENCES, AND USE SWITCHES
If you tag cound is manageable, you can put a series of on/off switches in your CMS table, each representing a Tag. That tag is applied when the switch is on.
PRO - Easy to implement.
PRO - No 5-field or 10-field limit, like References have.
CON - Sort order is fixed.
CON - Any tag-info pages have to be static pages, which you manually link to from that tag
#3 - DITCH REFERENCES, AND SPECIFY YOUR TAGS USING A CSV STRING
Pretty sure this works, but I’ve only done a conceptual design so far, details are here.
#4 - USE MULTIREF, THEN EXTRACT YOUR HIERARCHY THROUGH THE WEBFLOW API
This is the gnarliest approach yet. Here you use the CMS as-designed, with a multiref to your Tags table.
Separately, you build some code that will hit the Webflow API, extract your needed info, and build a hierarchy of Item to Refs as JSON, this is published to some URL.
Then, reference that JSON URL, and inject it into your Webflow page.
Now you have the Item to Tag data you need, and using jQuery you can add the correct Tags to each of your cards, including links, colors, etc.
PRO - The only solution that does 100% of what you want.
CON - Programming to create the JSON via the API
CON - Hosting this somewhere
CON - Programming the jQuery to create your styled Tags