User-Specific Data

Webflow User Accounts isn't designed for user-specific data.

The central mechanic for access control is the access group, which can be assigned at your discretion. Access groups can be used to "gate" static pages and collection pages, however they cannot be used to gate individual CMS items.

This is a central limitation, because in most systems, the number of users would grow, and the user-specific data would grow with it- static pages would not be a suitable way to manage this.

Limited Workarounds

Individual Access Groups, per User ( 20 users max )

Create an access group for each user. Assign them to your individual users. Gate your static page content.

Problems;

• There is a limit of 20 access groups in total, which means it's not a suitable mechanic for controlling user-specific data access.
• Access groups cannot gate CMS items

Javascript-based Gating ( Complex, no security )

With creative use of tools like Finsweet CMS Load and a lot of custom code it's possible to create a personalized content view for each user individually from CMS data.

• Fairly high degree of complexity on the site design, data modeling, and coding work
• No security. The underlying data is still exposed to everyone who has a login.

Reverse-Proxy Solution

One approach that Sygnal uses is to build a reverse proxy setup that adds a second level of gating that we can make granular.  We can detect Mary is logged in, know Mary's access groups and know exactly which CMS items Mary individually has the ability to access.

All of that is done through a separate system build that runs on top of Webflow, so it can provide real server-side gating, and it can offer more granular gating;

• User-specific CMS items and pages
• Access-group-specific element gating

There are still complexities and limitations here since the CMS is not a "real" database and does not support arbitrary queries easily. But with some planning this solution works well for our clients.

Contact us to enquire about a reverse proxy build.

‍