I’m building a portfolio site where I want to have product lines, then a subcategory, then images within that category, then I wanted to show icons for how that product is manufactured (laser cutting, printing, etc). I built this in CMS as a series of multi-references, but discovered that while the page represents the product line, and then I can display the sub-categories, and within that, the images, I couldn’t do the manufacturing methods. I have used the workaround of having toggles for each method and using conditional display, but I already have 10 options and fear that’s going to consume all my available fields. I realize that I can use multi-image for images alone, but want to associate them with a description and the manufacturing methods. I didn’t realize we were also limited on quantity of results from the multi-reference, hopefully I don’t run into that in the near future. From my DB days, I know that joins can be resource intensive, but with good indexing, it’s fine. Since our links can be numerical, I would think this shouldn’t be a problem.
Why not put alle the manufacturing options in an options field and use conditional visibility based on that?
I tried that, it didn’t seem to allow me to select more than one option…
Oh I see. What about making a new collection list with the manufacturing options as items in it, then using a multi-reference field in the main list - and then using conditional visibility based on the referenced stuff? That should work.
The main list is just a sub-section. So like “paper invitations” but each picture represents a different invitation that might have used different printing process, of foil stamping, or laser cutting, etc. That’s where I want to apply the reference to those methods. Here is a screenshot of a rough layout.
Yeah, you could do that with the way I described.
Make two collections, one with the manufacturing ways, one with the actual products.
In the manufacturing ways list, add the different ways of manufacturing as items.
In the products collection, have the product lines (paper, acrylic, etc) as categories using the Option field and use a multi-reference field to pick one or more of the manufacturing ways.
In the collection list out on the site, add all the tiny icons of the manufacturing ways in the collection items, then use conditional visibility on them (“show” when “manufacturing way” = “XYZ”).
I think the same too… in Fact, I have already that issue in a current project and i’m getting crazy because of this. I hope the Webflow team fix this asap.
Do you know if this could be listed anytime soon?
Hello together,
Started the first client project with nested collections and have some ideas for improvement of the nested collections feature:
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We urgently need more than one nested collection on a static page (e.g. to show a blog posts overview on a static site we usually require one nested collection for “category”, one for “tags” and one for “authors”).
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In addition, the following is mainly missing: In the list of conditions (Conditional Visibility) only CMS fields of the child collection (nested collection) can be selected. However, it is essential to have a link to the parent collection to control the visibility of individual elements of the child collection. Example: I have blog posts with 1-3 authors. If more than one author is to be displayed you need to separate them with commas (e.g. Jeff Marley, Peter Brown, Mike Moore). But if a blog post is written by only one author, the first comma (here behind Jeff Marley,) must be hidden. For this purpose, a boolean switcher in the CMS could be set “More than one author” and a condition could be set for the text field with the comma >> only visible if the boolean switch is set to “true”. But this field is in the parent collection and can’t be controlled via the “Conditions”, because these only shows fields of the child collection.
My workaround for the second point is using a CSS child selector
.nested-collection-list-item:not(:first-child):before {
content: ', ';
}
but this doesn’t work in all cases.
Wanted to check in on a timeline to increase the limit of 5 item visibility for a nested collection
Given that with a business plan you can increase the limit to 10 items it looks more like a deliberate decision than something in development. It would be nice though as it makes multi reference items more or less useless for me with such restrictions.
Where do you see that? Don’t see it on the plans and pricing page?
@Aerodyll, it’s well hidden, like some other Webflow limitations…
You can fin it by going in the Hosting section from a project and clicking the “see full comparison” button.
Then it’s under “References per Collection”
Yes. Wow, you’re exactly right. It’s quite unfortunate to not allow collection lists inside links.
Thus, if your collection item is a link (say, to learn more on its specific product page), then you cannot use this nested collection feature.
I spent a few hours preparing to use nested collection lists and hit this roadblock as soon as I tried to add the second collection list:
We worked around this by creating a 100% height / 100% width / position:absolute div as a dummy wrapper to hold the link and putting all content in another div. It works, though it’s a little messy & hacky.
Hello all!
Working on a project and I need a dynamic lightbox element inside a static page. This will be something like a gallery. So, I tried couple of things and knowing that we can make it work only on CMS template pages I thought that I can nest collections to follow the CMS page template logic.
This is another use case that makes the 5 items limit very disappointing.
Thanks 
I wanted to use it for listing product names in categories on homepage. Just 6 categories with 20 products in total.
I ran into a limit as one of my categories had 6 products and limit is 5.
therefore useless for my case and I had to do it manually.
Have you seen this workaround : Webflow Nest - F'in sweet CMS Library
It’s another custom code thing to go around limitations, but it might work…
This actualy worked for me, thanks for your tip 
I found that by using Tabs, that counts as one page. I have four Tabs that display a collection list in each. On two of the Tabs I wanted to organize the list by category, so I used a nested collection on my first one, but when I moved to the next one I discovered I am only allowed one per page. I can see how this could get out of hand, but I think the limit of one is too restrictive. 5 would be better. I only need 4 for now. Tabs are a really good option when you want to reduce scrolling. Shouldn’t need a “read-only” link to understand my request.
Here is my solution if you are struggling with Webflow‘s limitations (max 1 nested collection with max 5 items per page): Multiple Nested Collections with unlimited Items in a single static page (clonable project)
Feedback and ideas welcome 