One-off custom designed blog posts - possible?

Design help CMS
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I’m a recent Webflow convert from WordPress and loving it! I’ve hit one thing that I can’t figure out how to do.

In WP, the majority of my blog posts would use the same post template. I filled in the custom fields with content, hit publish, job done. And I can do that in Webflow too, great.

However…

Sometimes I could optionally create an individual blog post with a completely custom layout.

I do NOT mean using an alternative pre-made post template. I mean, I could instead opt to create an entirely custom design, using the full page width.

In Webflow terms, think creating the blog post with the page designer. So I could add full width sections with coloured backgrounds, build different designed sections, etc.

This would only be for the odd post here and there.

Is there a way to achieve something like this in Webflow?

I’m guessing there isn’t an option to bypass the post’s custom fields completely for any given post and use the designer?

I wonder if there’s a way to create a static page, and have the link to that page appear within the blog post collection list, as if it’s a regular blog post?

I don’t know, just thinking out loud.

Thanks for any tips.

Here is my public share link, although it’s useless for my question:

https://preview.webflow.com/preview/davefoy?utm_medium=preview_link&utm_source=designer&utm_content=davefoy&preview=b2bf272813ed8b9f026c3cc108ccb9c2&mode=preview

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Here’s a real life example of what I mean.

On Backlinko’s blog, 90% of posts use the same single post template.

Example: 17 Untapped Ways to Find New Content Ideas

However, for some special posts, the post is custom designed.

Example: Landing Pages: The Definitive Guide

You can see there’s no way that’s created with a template and standard custom fields.

I’m wondering if this is possible with Webflow.

(To be clear, I’m not asking how to achieve Backlinko’s design in Webflow… just generally how to have the occasional post use a totally custom page design, like a static page).

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do you mean this ?

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Hey Stan. I don’t think so… I know how to do that, I mentioned in the original post.

Would that allow me the option to custom design a post as if a static page, completely free-form?

It’s not really a multiple layout for the same custom fields that I need.

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One possible solution might be…

I create the custom-designed post as a static page. Export it as code. Then copy/paste that code into a HTML embed block in a custom field? And then have a conditional layout (as per your linked tutorial above) which consists of only a full width blank div.

Maybe?

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Hi @mrdavefoy sorry, I have miss that information. I was now checking DOM and in normal blog page inside main is <article> element and on special page is many <section> elements to scroll into. Wouldn’t be better to create a new collection for these special posts and blend them together with normal blog post as preview card for any post can be identical because is set separately.

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Thanks Stan. I don’t think this would work, because even a new collection of special posts would give me the same problem - I’d still be stuck with filling in custom fields that are set at specific preset points in the template, so I wouldn’t have the freedom to design what I wanted (like the example I gave).

Your idea sounds along the right lines though!

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Maybe the question I should be asking is… is it possible to use the Webflow page designer to create blog post content?

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This is for me an unusual thinking about tool that is made for design to be use as content generator. But you are not first who asked similar question. Do you have any design platform example that do this things. How design tool can access data from database and generate content? On what criteria will be content generated, what data will be shown and what will be hidden? Im just trying to understand how you thing. Or maybe I didn’t get it at all. :wink:

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Heh heh, don’t worry. :slight_smile:

Well, for me the outcome is what I’m focused on: how Backlinko’s blog works. Most posts follow a template, some posts are much more custom-designed (like when he creates special guides with a table of contents, different coloured sections, etc), impossible to create with a premade template.

In terms of tools, I can do this with WordPress no problem. I can create a post template and choose to use that for most posts - the default. But on any post I can choose to bypass the post template and instead use a page builder WordPress plugin called Elementor. It allows you to design on a blank page, much like the standard Webflow static page designer. That way you can have complete drag-n-drop design control if you want to, but also rely on the default post template for most posts.

But as I say, other tools don’t matter really, it’s the outcome that I want to achieve with Webflow. I’m sure there’s a way of doing it, even if it means a bit of a workaround.

Thank you for your help and trying to understand.

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I think this ingenious solution from @vincent will solve my problem :grin:

Create the occasional ‘custom design’ post as a static page and make a conditional link to it in the collection list.

2 Likes
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Just finished reading this topic. Is bookmarked :sunglasses: and will do some tests next weekend.

1 Like
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Hi @mrdavefoy, did you ever find a solution to this? I created something similar on my blog (voyagesjapan.com), but Webflow seems to try to load everything at once when you click into the article. Would love to hear if you were ever able to figure out how to do unique post layouts…