Trying to add a Blog Post (CMS Collection 1) inside of a linked Category Collection List (CMS Collection 2) on a blog list page

Hey everyone,

I understand how to use the CMS but am not experienced in more advanced dealings. Basically, on my Blog List Page, I want to have rows representing each different category (CMS Collection 1) and inside of that category section have 1 featured Blog Post Title & Summary (CMS Collection 2) in that category section. Here is a Figma design of what I am wanting to create.

I’m having a hard time getting this to work correctly in Webflow. I’m running into an issue when I create a collection list for the categories and try to add the article, I’m struggling to figure out how to link the 2 and filter them onto this blog post page.

  1. I have a collection list for the Blog Posts and Categories.

  2. I have a featured switch in each one of the Blog Posts.

Hopefully, this context was helpful. Thank you for the assistance in advanced.


Here is my public share link: Read Only Link

Hi Paul, welcome to the forum.
There are two approaches for nesting lists here;

MULTI-REF FIELD
I personally don’t recommend this one at all, but, some like it.
You can add a multi-ref field in your Categories table that links to the Blog Posts in it.

  • Advantage - you can use Webflow’s nested Collection Lists feature directly
  • Disadvantages - you’re limited to 5 nested items, you cannot sort or filter them, and multiref fields are difficult to manage in the CMS admin console.

SCRIPT-SOLUTION
Generate your Categories list and your Post list separately, and use script to reorganize them up on screen. I do this a lot for clients, so message if you’d like help building it.

  • Advantage - easy administration, can do more than 100 nested items on the page, can sort how you like, works with dynamic filtering.
  • Disadvantage - requires some code, or a 3rd party toolset.

Have a look at Finsweet’s CMS Nest feature as well, you may be able to make that work well for what you’re doing.

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Hey @memetican,

Thank you for your response on this. So if I were to go the multi-ref field route, the person writing the blogs would essentially have to use the multi-ref field to kind of manually select the blog that has that same category?

In nested collection lists, the nesting has to be a parent-to-child multi-ref relationship.
Your user would-

  • Write the article in Blogs
  • Go to Collections, find the collection
  • Add the blog to the end of the multiref field

Webflow multiref fields don’t allow re-ordering, so if you wanted it at the top, you’d have to delete all of the items and re-add them.

As I recall, you also can’t sort nested collection lists, so your item goes at the end of the nested list, and then after 5 they’re just truncated.

Your best best with things like this is to create a simple blank site, throw some data in, and mock it up. It’s important to know the details and ins and outs of each feature first-hand so you can make the right decision for your use case.

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Hi @BlueCloverWebDesign :wave: welcome to the forum.

If I’m understanding your ask correctly, it’s doable.

Here’s an interesting (high-level) walk through of how a complex blog can be setup with Webflow talking about their approach (along with other things) to solving the “featured site” switch:

Checkout solutions offered by Jetboost and see if it can help:

Checkout the somewhat recently added Webflow feature for your CMS:

Finsweet can most likely help here as well:

“Option to have no limitations for Webflow CMS Nested Collections. Nest more than 5 items. Nest multiple Collections on a page.”

…and some creative Webflow solutions:

It looks like all the parts & pieces are available to you (if I’m understanding your correctly), just spend a bit of time reading through these resources and I believe you’ll be in a good spot.

Hope that helps!

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Awesome, for now, I used the multi-ref option. Thank you for the assistance this was very helpful :+1:

Hey @ChrisDrit, thank you for these resources. I had no idea about nesting collection lists but am glad I do now. Thanks :+1: