I’m new to CMS collections, and am concerned I am not using them correctly…
I setup a few CMS collections for different sections of my site… for example, Hero sections, Call To Actions, etc. They are each various CMS Collection types.
I then styled everything on the CMS Collection Pages…
However, I cannot figure out how to add these to a regular page…i.e. how do I add my CMS Collection A Section 1 and CMS Collection B Section 1 to a page? I don’t see anything I can add easily to a page, like dragging in a component. Or is this now how it’s supposed to work?
I also thought I could use a new CMS Collection with “reference” fields to other collections, so all fields I need are in one place. I have not finished trying this, but wanted to see if this is the only way? Then I would have to use the CMS Collection Page as my public-facing URL for users, which maybe is how it is supposed to work?
The CMS is useful for managing structured content that you’ll end up with multiple rows, something like a spreadsheet or database. Think blog articles, news articles, recipes, products, services, staff members, customer testimonials. Each of these has a “shape” and multiple items.
When you do that, Webflow makes it easy to do two key things;
Display lists of content from a collection, using a Collection List element.
Generate a page for each item in the collection, using the Collection Page template.
So for example a list of your blog articles, where each takes you to the full blog article page. Easy to build, easy to SEO.
When you’re building individual parts of a page like your heros and CTA’s, you can just build them with elements and no CMS connection. If you want them to be reusable, read up on components.
So my initial thinking was to do components for page sections…
But I’m using CMS Bridge by Finsweet, so I can manage all content in airtable… This makes it very easy to manage lots of CMS Collections, but creates this situation…
First I made entire webflowing landing pages into a sing CMS collection (one long one), but it was overwhelming number of fields. So now I have made the CMS collections for different website sections, but as you say, it’s more for displaying content that is repeated.
Is there a good way to use CMS collections to populate pages? Any thoughts on using the CMS collection with “reference” fields to allow multiple Collections to be combined?
Yeah I’d recommend that you use the right tool for the job.
A CMS is for content management, specifically for situation in which you have a pile of similarly structure data, just as I explained above.
Use it accordingly.
Most businesses have only one about page, so you’d avoid the CMS for that, it doesn’t make sense and creates complications.
On the other hand, if you were creating a site for a series of franchises, and had 100 about pages, the CMS can make your life much easier.