List all pages created by static templates

Hi,

I want to create a simple Portfolio/Cases page for a client. Problem is, the design varies from item to item.

So a solution with the CMS is not ideal, since the client somehow needs different content-components.

Well, let’s use the static templates with components slots then … perfect.

But, is there a way to list all of those cases like a „collection list“ does - for example list the last 5 projects on the homepage?

How to approach this? It’s kind of a mix between static templates with components and CMS collections …

Any ideas?
Thanks!

You’ve got the right idea, and yes often I’ll mix them.
In your Cases CMS collection you can add a URL field, and use relative paths to your pages, e.g. /portfolio/gpt6.

That makes it easy to build your directory pages along with any titles, briefs, main image, etc.

Yeah, I see, thats probably a solution without getting too hacky… I was thinking about using the API or some JS script to get all the pages of a specific path (for example pages starting with „domain.com/cases/„) … but the problem is, you can’t use convenient Features like the collection list element, or the functions within the cms collection (mandatory fields, text length restrictions, etc)…

But anyway, if you already used the solution:

How did your clients do? I mean, they have to create a cms item, and then they have to create the static page, and then they have to put the correct url into the correct cms item …. Do they understand :grin:? I’m sensing a lot of client requests like „why does this not work?“

The nicest solution would be to have slots on each cms items page (collection template) … that would be a powerful move …

Thanks!

Yes it’s not ideal, but they can learn.

Page slots could be powerful but I think it would be tricky to contextualize it to each specific CMS item.

I’ve been pushing for two slightly different approaches-

1 - CMS-item-bound static pages.

  • Create any static page, and “bind it” to a specific CMS item. That gives you complete freedom in the design but also a full binding context on the page, same as you would have on that collection’s template page.
  • WF manages that item binding “exclusively”, meaning that you can only bind one page to each item, and the CMS template is the fallback
  • If you have a collection list, and a link to Current Item, WF then knows whether to link to /some-item or /template/item.

This feels easy to understand, aligns well with the designer paradigm, and away a bunch of problem areas like

2 - Template variants

  • Similar to above, but a little more reusable. Here you create any page, and then turn it into a template by binding it to a collection.
  • Webflow then treats it the same way as a /collection-page/… but at a different path and with a different layout
  • Individual items default to the default template, but can be individually assigned to a template variant, so they have a different layout

I think approach #2 is my preferred, because it provides the same capability as #1 and it aligns better with the new component variant and variable modes concepts.

For now, when I really want to give the client control without too much confusion, I build my collection pages with a lot of conditional visibility, like this-