Advanced CMS Design

Know Your Limits, and Design with them in Mind

Overview
Crucial Design Principles
Know Your Limits, and Design with them in Mind
201
Minimize Your Use of Multi-Refs
202
Crucial Design Principles
CMS Relationships
202
Minimize Your Use of Collection Lists
203
Minimize Your Use of Scripts
204
Manageability Matters
205
Design Approach
Design Approach
300
Prototyping
402
Demo Project
Example Project - IMDB
500
Phase 1 - Design
501
Phase 2 - Prototyping
502
Phase 3 - Build
503
Review our Project Results
505
Further refinements
506
Resources
How to structure your Webflow CMS Collections
901
The Xref Pattern for Two-Way References
902
Advanced
Webflow CMS Technical Deep Dive
951
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Published
Updated
November 6, 2022
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Know your limits.

In Webflow's CMS, your limits include;

  • 20 total collections ( CMS plan ), or 40 ( Business plan )
  • 2,000 total item ( CMS plan ), or 10,000+ ( Business plan )
  • 5 Reference fields per collection, including single and multi-refs combined ( 10 for higher plans )
  • Multi-ref fields are fixed in ordering
  • Refs and multi-refs are one-way. You cannot query them from the other end of the reference.

In the Webflow designer your limits include;

  • 20 Collection Lists per page
  • 100 items per list, before pagination is needed

Nested Collection lists are supported, however they;

  • Are limited to 5 items
  • Cannot be filtered or sorted ( verify this )

Pricing

Mid-2024, Webflow introduced the ability to increase certain CMS limits on the Business plan, at an added cost.

  • 10k items ( base Business plan ) - $49/mo*
  • 15k items - $86/mo*
  • 20k items - $124/mo*

* Prices are monthly, Webflow has a discount for annual plans.

Design for those limits.

If you don't design for these limits, you'll almost certainly hit them, hard.

Like a kid running full speed into a wall, you'll suddenly be laying there dazed, wondering what happened, why the world is upside-down, and why you're wearing your ice cream.

For me, it was coffee.

Most people encounter these limits completely unprepared.

The truth is, those limits really aren't a problem in good site design at all. You just have to be aware of them, and how to design with them in mind- the same way an architect needs a basic grasp of gravity and local weather, in order to build a decent home.

If you have hit these limits and it's frustrating your design, you probably want to rethink your design.

FAQs

Answers to frequently asked questions.

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