CMS Collection Template (for categories of books)

Hi there,

I’m wanting to receive some advice for a website I have been working on…

In short the business that I work for prints and publish’s books.

On our website we will display certain books which will have categories associated with them.

My Webflow project currently has a CMS Collection for my Books and all of the relevant information. As you all should know because I have Books in a Collection I can then edit my Collection Page Template only once to design the pages for every other book.

Now… my question is.

Can (should is the more pertinent question) I create a Collection Template for my Categories? I have planned to have a category page i.e “books for teens” which will display all of the books that have that category in their CMS database.

Currently I have 5 individual pages for the categories I have (which are all filtered accordingly), sorted by A-Z as well. But it means every time I make a design change it doesn’t affect all of the other pages (obviously, because it isn’t a template).

From what I gather, creating a CMS Category I then have to add each book to the category, meaning that if I have 300 books for example (which fortunately I will be listing way less) that it’s highly likely one will be left out. The system I had setup earlier had 5 Categories to choose from in the Books Collection… and visually as I go through each book I know that each book has been assigned a category (particularly if that field is required to be published).

Thanks for your help, it’s greatly appreciated!


Here is my public share link: https://preview.webflow.com/preview/signspublishing?utm_source=signspublishing&preview=41376f865329ddc3ab53440c01ef4ec0

1 Like

Hello @Kalan

If I understand you right, yes. Having a collection for categories is a lot easier and better. You will use a reference field for the books collection to select the category and you will have a dynamic collection pages for the categories.

Piter :webflow_heart:

Hi @PeterDimitrov,

Thanks for your reply.

Is this the only way I can categorise my books and have them listed under my Categories Template Page?

In my initial post I explained that I would need to make sure every book is accounted for. Say a collection of 50+ I would need to make sure every single item has been tagged and to be sure not miss one otherwise it will be left out. Unlike my Books Category Option where I have made the field required to be filled out for publishing.

This is still however useful and I will not remove it because I have text (a category button in my design) being pulled from that Category Option.

Thanks. :slight_smile: