Feedback: Nest collection lists to display any referenced content

Do you know if this could be listed anytime soon?

Hello together,

Started the first client project with nested collections and have some ideas for improvement of the nested collections feature:

  • We urgently need more than one nested collection on a static page (e.g. to show a blog posts overview on a static site we usually require one nested collection for “category”, one for “tags” and one for “authors”).

  • In addition, the following is mainly missing: In the list of conditions (Conditional Visibility) only CMS fields of the child collection (nested collection) can be selected. However, it is essential to have a link to the parent collection to control the visibility of individual elements of the child collection. Example: I have blog posts with 1-3 authors. If more than one author is to be displayed you need to separate them with commas (e.g. Jeff Marley, Peter Brown, Mike Moore). But if a blog post is written by only one author, the first comma (here behind Jeff Marley,) must be hidden. For this purpose, a boolean switcher in the CMS could be set “More than one author” and a condition could be set for the text field with the comma >> only visible if the boolean switch is set to “true”. But this field is in the parent collection and can’t be controlled via the “Conditions”, because these only shows fields of the child collection.

My workaround for the second point is using a CSS child selector

.nested-collection-list-item:not(:first-child):before {
    content: ', ';
}

but this doesn’t work in all cases.

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Wanted to check in on a timeline to increase the limit of 5 item visibility for a nested collection

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Given that with a business plan you can increase the limit to 10 items it looks more like a deliberate decision than something in development. It would be nice though as it makes multi reference items more or less useless for me with such restrictions.

Where do you see that? Don’t see it on the plans and pricing page?

@Aerodyll, it’s well hidden, like some other Webflow limitations…
You can fin it by going in the Hosting section from a project and clicking the “see full comparison” button.

Then it’s under “References per Collection”

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Yes. Wow, you’re exactly right. It’s quite unfortunate to not allow collection lists inside links.

Thus, if your collection item is a link (say, to learn more on its specific product page), then you cannot use this nested collection feature.

I spent a few hours preparing to use nested collection lists and hit this roadblock as soon as I tried to add the second collection list:

We worked around this by creating a 100% height / 100% width / position:absolute div as a dummy wrapper to hold the link and putting all content in another div. It works, though it’s a little messy & hacky.

Hello all!

Working on a project and I need a dynamic lightbox element inside a static page. This will be something like a gallery. So, I tried couple of things and knowing that we can make it work only on CMS template pages I thought that I can nest collections to follow the CMS page template logic.

This is another use case that makes the 5 items limit very disappointing.

Thanks :webflow_heart:

I wanted to use it for listing product names in categories on homepage. Just 6 categories with 20 products in total.
I ran into a limit as one of my categories had 6 products and limit is 5.
therefore useless for my case and I had to do it manually.
:confused:

Have you seen this workaround : Webflow Nest - F'in sweet CMS Library
It’s another custom code thing to go around limitations, but it might work…

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This actualy worked for me, thanks for your tip :+1:t2:

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I found that by using Tabs, that counts as one page. I have four Tabs that display a collection list in each. On two of the Tabs I wanted to organize the list by category, so I used a nested collection on my first one, but when I moved to the next one I discovered I am only allowed one per page. I can see how this could get out of hand, but I think the limit of one is too restrictive. 5 would be better. I only need 4 for now. Tabs are a really good option when you want to reduce scrolling. Shouldn’t need a “read-only” link to understand my request.

Here is my solution if you are struggling with Webflow‘s limitations (max 1 nested collection with max 5 items per page): Multiple Nested Collections with unlimited Items in a single static page (clonable project)

Feedback and ideas welcome :wink:

Since we have an update for CMS Speed are we able to get more than 5 nested collection items viewable? I am very frustrated that it is this limited. I am very desperate for this feature. As I’m extremely limited and have been using weird workarounds for designing for my clients and has been negatively impacting me and my ability to give them what is promised. Some clients I straight up said I cannot do it at all and just took a snippet of 8 colors instead of just having 8 colored images popup :frowning: Been very frustrated with this and I run into almost every single build that I do now.
Could I vote on this feature if anyone knows a link to it. Thanks

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Totally agree with this comment and very disappointed with Webflow hidden limitations.