In the Webflow CMS system, we have groups of CMS items (content) called Collections. These collections have their own fields, so each of the items in the same collection have the same fields.
For example, a Blog Post collection has fields like Title/Summary/BodyText/Category/Tags, while an Author collection has fields like Name/Photo/Biography. Each of these collections hold many items.
CMS content is simply “all items” in all collections.
No. Wordpress.org is a company that develops and distributes the software Wordpress. You have to download, install, and set up the Wordpress on your own server. Wordpress by default only supports Blog Posts and Pages and Authors, and you need to install 3rd-party plugins or hire a developer to support custom Collections like Galleries, Projects, and whatever else you can think of.
In Webflow, you can directly create different types of collections, and customize the collections with different types of fields, like colour picker, numbers, text fields, map, image uploads, etc. If you are using Wordpress you have to resort to using 3rd-party plugins or hire a developer.
Simple. Choose Basic Hosting if:
- You are not going to be using any CMS features (items & collections, and editing of text directly from the published site), and
- You are the only person who will be updating the site.
This is because the mechanism for exporting the CMS collections and items have not been implemented. I can neither confirm nor deny as to whether this will be possible in the future.
The option is simple. If you need exporting of CMS items in the future, you can design the front-end of the website using Webflow, then export the code and integrate with a third-party CMS like Wordpress.
I have not heard of bubble.is before, but it seems promising.
Website designer - Focuses on frontend UI
Web app maker - Complete application that has deep integration with backend functionality like CRM (user registration/login/profiles/usergroups), e-commerce, API hooks, database storage, etc.
Both have their own pros and cons, you should choose depending on what features you need.
Yes, but it won’t be the best option.
Firstly, Webflow currently does not support user/guest submissions to the CMS collections (submit your own house/room as a listing). Therefore you will need to subscribe to and implement third party that does that, then you have to display their website/API in your website, which most likely uses an iframe, which is inserted into Webflow using an embed code component. To customize the style/layout of the elements inserted with a custom code component, you will need knowledge of HTML and CSS (and even possibly JavaScript/jQuery). If not, you will have to hire a web developer to perform customization. But wait! You can style the iframe, but you will NOT be able to style the external webpage! (cross-site limitation imposed by web browsers).
As you can see just for this simple example, one thing will lead to another gotcha pretty easily.
The above example is only for ONE limitation/constraint. If your site requires other stuff like user registrations, e-commerce functionality, member-only area like wishlist/shortlist, user profiles, voting, etc,etc… How many third-party script hacks are you going to implement? And once you are done with all the hacks implemented, you are better off hiring the developer to create your web app outside of Webflow.
Where Webflow does well, is only the frontend/UI part. There are thousands of other things required if you need a fully functional app like a real-estate portal. This is the front-end of the site I created in Webflow. As you can see, it’s just the front-end. To make everything work like the search/filter functionality, custom maps, etc., you need to move elsewhere to continue development.
I am not a staff of Webflow, and the opinions expressed above are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Webflow team. I disclaim all and any responsibility or liability in respect of information detailed or omitted (or the consequences thereof) from this post.