Half static half dynamic blog

Design help CMS
1

Someone name “gracer” posted this a while ago. I would like to know the answer to the same question. Who knows the answer and can help us? Thank you!

I quote Gracer:

Hey there, Thank you in advance for reading and helping!

I would like to create a portfolio site with multiple case studies and I am wondering if I can create half dynamic, half static pages?

For the first half of the page, I would like to use collections to hold my project info (such as hero image, description, project statement, services, role in project…) in dynamic list.

For the second half of the page, I would love to have actual case studies of my process, loaded with images, text, parallax and possibly interactions.

: for clarification, by static I mean without CMS and dynamic content… but will include interactions.

I only know two ways of using dynamic data:
a) Create an child page with existing template (but I will have no flexibility of customizing the work process portion)
b) Use a dynamic list (but this will pull of the contents from different projects in a list form, I know I can filter, but it will require more efforts)

I am just wondering if this kind of page is at all possible? If not, I guess the work round would be creating everything static.

The reason why I would want to implement dynamic content is that some of the content such as category and services will be shared between projects and project listing page and project case studies pages will share the same information such as title, descriptions, services.

2

On all of my webflow blogs, and on some of the sites I built for clients, I’m using a technique to mix CMS items with static items.

I add a “Static page URL” field in the collection of the main items (bog posts, case study, references…). So I’ll mainly use the CMS but when I need a special page, one with demo and interactions, I make a static page, and I paste the URL of it in the field. Now, in my Collection lists linking to CMS items, I have a conditional visibility to hide the link to the CMS post and use the link to the static page instead, on the condition that a URL has been entered in the static page field.

3 Likes
3

Thank you for your wise words. How do you make a static page url? I don’t see that as an option anywhere in designer mode and I would like to use the same workflow as you do!

4

Hi @Lotus

Basically just create a new page in the designer, and give it a name, in the page settings it will auto create a URL for you. :slightly_smiling_face:

new%20page
new%20page658×510 23.3 KB

name%20the%20page%20-%20URL%20created
name%20the%20page%20-%20URL%20created632×532 12.4 KB

5

Smart idea! But with all plans (free and paid plans) you can only have a 100 static pages… Is there a solution for that?

6

Not that I know of. That would be great if we could have a webflow snippet collection field. Like a Rich Text that would basically be a Designer viewport, or a Custom Code that would be visual. No other CMS offers that possibility (there’s not much incentive to do this on another system though).

@callmevlad wouldn’t your teams be the first beneficiaries of such a feature? I’m thinking about some of the University sections, and @jmw’s blog.

7

Too bad I can not have a blog then. With my free plan I can only have two pages and I obviously want to make more blog posts that are static and dynamic. So where do you add the url of your static page in the cms page?

8

Say you have a BLOG POSTS collection:

Add a URL field called “static page post”.
When you have created a static page post, add a CMS post in BLOG POSTS and paste the URL in the URL field.
Now you’ll use this URL instead of the “Current post” url in the collection list that links all the posts. You do this with Conditional visibility. Basically for each post you’ll have a “Read post” button or link. Well design another button, same look, and affect it the URl of the static post. With conditional visibility, you’ll only show one button for each post teaser. If there is no url in the url field, (“Not set”), then show the normal button and hide the static one. If there is a url (“is set”) then do the opposite.

On my blog inb4.webflow.io I alos use long pages called “stages” where I design sections with experiments. And I give an ID to each section. In the collection of my CMS posts, I have a field for the name of the ID. And I use this dynamically to create a link in dynamic posts to a section of the stage page. So on 1 static page I can have 30 or more experiments. Experiments should also be self explanatory and link back to the post so visitors ca browse the page directly and access the posts from it.

1 Like
9

Thank you, I will try that out. You’re helping me a lot.

My first language isn’t english so I am doing the best I can. Where do I have to add a url field called “static page post?”. I know I have to put a name in the url field for cms collections usually. Is that what you mean? (Probably not right haha…)"

(I love your blog btw! You’re writing about great hacks for webflow! Maybe you can make videos about webflow because my two friends who have webflow also agreed that it would be so nice to watch!)

1 Like
10

When you create a collection you add fields. Text, color switches images etc. like for a blog post the title, the teaser image etc. Those are field. There’s a type of field which is a URL one. And later you can use its infos to bind it to a text link or block link.

11

Great! is the url of the static page the name of your website with the title of the article for example? I have not published my site yet so I can not check it…

12

@vincent - just wanted to say thank you for your ingenious solution to a problem I’ve also had. I want most blog posts to use a standard post template, but I want the occasional post to allow me complete page design control using the Webflow page designer. Creating these occasional posts as static pages and linking to them from within the collection list is perfect! :pray:t3:

2 Likes
13

Hi! I was trying to follow the explaination by @vincent. However I was not able to follow the steps on how to use “conditional visibility to hide the link to the CMS post”. Is it is possible to provide some screen shots? Thank you so much, Torbs

14

Ok ok, where are you getting lost?

15

Hey @vincent I’m having the same issues as @torbs.

Could you provide some more explanation to what you mean by this part “Now, in my Collection lists linking to CMS items, I have a conditional visibility to hide the link to the CMS post and use the link to the static page instead, on the condition that a URL has been entered in the static page field.”

Thanks.

16

Answering my own question but this livestream was the solution for me if anyone else is in the same boat! Creating multiple layouts for Webflow collection template pages - YouTube

17

@nlavvv do you have an example of where you’ve implemented this technique? I have a site that I just started creating a couple of months ago (www.voyagesjapan.com) and I’ve used the technique in the video.

However, I ran out of CMS fields and instead started using a bastardized version of vincent’s technique. But the articles load way too slowly, since Webflow is trying to load all the content at once. Would love to see your solution if you were able to figure it out, and how many different post templates you were able to use.