Custom content in CMS rich text

Hi,

I’m wondering if it’s possible to place custom content such as…

  • A button
  • A custom component
  • An image grid
  • Anything else that I can make in Webflow basically

… inside Rich Text elements in the CMS?

I’m in the process of creating a blog-like website, and the Rich Text just doesn’t give me enough flexibility between blog posts. I know that on WordPress you can basically just insert a “block” that can contain any kind of content in the content of the post.

However, it seems that on Webflow I am limited by the design and layout of the Collection Page Template? I understand this makes a lot of sense for some of the content like the title, date, short description, featured image and so on, but for the actual content I need more flexibility than is currently allowed in the Rich Text – and this content is not going to be places the same place for every post, thus making the Collection Page template un-usable in this scenario.

Does anyone have experience with this? How do I combat it? Any workarounds? Anything I’m missing?

I could obviously just create a custom page for every single blog post, and not use the CMS at all, but that seems… wrong. And I’m sure it’ll come haunt me down the line some day. And this also leaves me without all the smart features of a collection, in terms of sorting etc.

Really looking forward to your help.
/Rasmus

1 Like

I see. Thanks.

Not saying this looks complex, but let’s say all I wanted to do was add a divider or some super simple element that isn’t built-in to Rich Text, I’d have to do it with custom code like this?

1 Like

You’ll find the finsweet function is pretty easy to use and very flexible. I see it being used by content admins who are more advanced and need the maximum level of control over each post.

One alternative:
I’ve created “generic” posts with forethought, including many elements/functions available through the the cms. My collection template page is a long scrolling page with all of these elements designed and connected to information in the data set. I then tell each of these elements to only appear if the content manager has added something to them. This is done through conditional visibility.
I’ve create multiple layout rows to give the manager flexibility in layout. One row is 100%, one row is 2-column 50/50, 2-column 60/40, etc. Each column has a RTE, image, text, etc to insert content. Again, these rows will only appear if content has been added to them. I include dividers as well between rows, which appear with conditional visibility.

So this doesn’t give your client the full control of a robust RTE like you’re after, but it gives a lot of flexibility. Gives a bit more control over the design vs a robust RTE (which can go awry). And the client can always come back to you and say “hey, I also need you to add this” and it’s very easy to add new cms options.

One thing the cms needs that can solve many hangups is a repeater field, for quickly adding multiple cms elements. Vote for it here! Repeater Fields | Webflow Wishlist

1 Like

For all of the things that the rich text element does not support, you can use it’s custom html embed, and just add whatever HTML or JS you want.

However since that’s not designer-friendly, many people use FS’s “components” to add this type of capability.