Is CMS a dynamic list or collection and does it get exported

Hi all,

I have a difficulty in understanding dynamic collections with respect to the Q -will this be exported or not in my website export for hosting on a 3rd party provider-

I watched some vids and may i say that i understood that
dynamic content and CMS go together.

if there is no collection creation do we still have CMS and dynamic content created or existing in the project and what this can be, ie an banner placement that is on all pages top side for example (looks static as is not linked to a list i guess)

I say this because ie in the CMS collection fields tutorials i see a Plain text field, and I assume it is CMS which means it will not be exported for my website i guess.

Unless you mean will not be considered dynamic because it is not linked is to something like a menu choice font etc.

Do we i.e consider

  1. dynamic CMS, a top bar menu page with 4 choices and each choice has a different font assigned to it.
  2. dynamic CMS a text that has assigned ie a header 2 property and such text appears on ie 2 pages.

I am affraid i will begin making a website and at the end will have to deal with contents that dont export as they are considered Dynamic CMS etc.

amy help on this is appreciated

No.

Trying to provide you a clear definition of what’s a static website vs. a dynamic website.

  • a static website is a website that has pages that have been built by hand. If you want to modify this website, or add content, you have to create new page or go into each of its pages to make changes.
  • a dynamic website is a website that is dynamically (“live”, “instantly”) pulling some of its content from a database. And to add content to it, one can log in a back-office to inject new content into the database. The website will then instantly display the new content. (think blog, news, e-commerce… although you could do those example sites in a static way but that is a crazy amount of manual work and maintenance).

With Webflow, you can download everything that is static, nothing that is dynamic.

CMS and e-commerce components, such as Collection Lists, Collection Pages based on Collection Template Pages, won’t export.

A Content Management System is by definition using a database to populate pages dynamically, so it it dynamic, yes. CMS implies that there’s also a back-office to add and manage content.

If there’s no Collection in your site, it’s entirely static and every component of the site should export fine, I think.

If there’s a field, there’s a collection, so it’s CMS, and not exported.

Several menu items in a navbar, styled differently: nothing to do with CMS.

This title has to be manually copied to be on 2 pages, nothing CMS either here.

Note: if you have Symbols that is keeping elements in sync accross several pages: still nothing to do with CMS, this is just a… let’s call it a Webflow building and maintenance helper. Symbols content export gracefuly as static content.

In order not to risk it, don’t create collections, and you’ll be exporting everything that you see.

Static vs. dynamic is a fundamental piece of knowledge in modern web design. You need to understand it well. Don’t hesitate to ask again and again until you master the topic, it’s quite easy, but I get that can be confusing the first time you encounter it. I hope we lifted any remaining doubt you had.

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thanks for the answers are helpful.
so i ask further.
if i make an animation like 3 overlaping images i see on a mac tutorial of your live streaming, like a powermac case moving, is this dynamic cms or not.

i want to have the animations fx with image objects orcombined with moving text, but i guess text as you say is CMS rather than static element.

i got the static vs dynamic, but what i dont get what is considered dynamic in terms of programming ie text fields etc. for example. The confusion comes when i also think text in a static page and dont know what is the difference from text that is CMS as you said above. I will not create any kind of database or collection as you say, but i want my text to be animated to allow export also.

main problem is code export at the moment