Collection URL Path Hierarchy

Design help General
1

I’m trying to build a URL path using collections that will be more than two levels deep. The end result will be similar to this path:

BASE URL/swim-school/north/preschool/red-p3/

I’ve created 3 collections:

  1. Locations - This creates the “North” and South links for the first directory in the URL
  2. Groups - Contains the class groups “preschool” and is a Multi Reference field in Locations for the second directory in the URL
  3. Levels - Contains class levels and is a Multi Reference field in Groups for the third level in the URL

I’m able to get up to two levels of hierarchy:
swimmac.webflow.io/swim-school/north/

This “north” page displays the groups but when clicking a group I can’t figure out how to maintain the URL path for a third level. Instead it opens in a new path with two levels:
swimmac.webflow.io/swim-school-groups/preschool

Does anyone know a way to build collections with more than 2 levels of hierarchy?

Thanks!

Here is my site Read-Only: LINK

2

Hi Rick,

The only way is to do this on a Webflow-hosted site is to design a reverse proxy that can resolve your desired paths to Webflow’s collection page paths.

If you need help building this, here’s a page on how I build this for clients. At the bottom are some technical notes that may help if you’re coding it yourself.

You’ll want to give some special thought to how you’re mapping these.
A CMS driven hierarchy is actually rather tricky because you have to get that CMS data to the reverse proxy for path resolution.

If you can afford to, I’d avoid that and go with a “static path map” that you hardcode into your path resolver, or else an “arbitrary path map” which simplifies the map publishing.

For example in a blog site, I might add a field “Canonical Path” to the blog, and you enter whatever path you want. That map then gets published to a hidden page, which the RP can pick up and use for resolution.

Also keep in mind you will also want to correct your canonicals and your sitemap.

3

Thanks for your help @memetican I’ll look more into this. It seems like it shouldn’t be this difficult to create logical paths that suit the hierarchy of your site’s content. Starting to think more about going back to Wordpress although I’d rather not.

4

I fully agree, the path restrictions were a real shock to me when I first began using Webflow. In truth it hasn’t affected me on most sites, and Webflow’s approach has the advantage of keeping URLs shorter.

But for some projects, that limitation is a problem.