So, if you want to add several tags to a collection item in Webflow, such as years, you need to set up a separate collection for the years (e.g., 2023, 2024, 2025…) and then use a multi-reference field in the collection you want to tag with years.
This setup allows you to filter collection items based on the years in the multi-reference field. However, you can’t include more than five different years in the ‘Years’ collection due to the nesting limit of a maximum of 5 nested items. The sixth year item will not be usable to e.g filtering the collection items.
I can’t figure out a way to tag collection items without referencing a separate collection unless I use custom scripting. Using an Option field only allows you to set one year/tag.
You’re right that Webflow doesn’t natively support a tagging feature for collections, but your approach with multi-reference fields is a good workaround, though limited by the nesting constraint. Unfortunately, without using a separate collection, you’re left with either custom scripting or workarounds like using Option fields (though it only allows one tag).
Another potential workaround is to use plain text fields for multiple years or tags and then create custom filters in your design. This would allow for more flexibility without hitting the nesting limit, but would require some custom coding for filtering on the front end. Hopefully, Webflow adds a more robust tagging feature in the future!
Christoffer, I typically use the same approach you took, but with Finsweet’s CMS Filter and CMS Load.
You can overcome the 5 nested-item limit using CMS Nest, but I’m not a huge fan of the complexity and performance challenges surrounding it, so in tagging scenarios, I’ll use a CSV-style string in a field, and then a “proxy” filter which populates a hidden FS text filter field. that gives full control with an unlimited number of tags.
Note all of this can be short circuited if your years are always a range like 2022-2024, then you can just you FS filter’s range filtering.
The main advantage of using the FS approach is that you have no 100 collection list limit, you get full dynamic pagination, and the filter can more easily be expanded with additional options later.
