Multiple nested Collections on a single page
Add multiple nested Collections without limitation of Collection Items on a single page in your Webflow project.
How to set it up?
Limitations & Solutions

Nested Collection Lists in Webflow

Webflow's Limitations
1 nested List with Max 5 items per page

The nested collections feature, which is available by default in Webflow designer, is a powerful tool. You can place a collection inside a collection on every static page (e.g. display blog tags on the main blog page). Webflow has, however, provided this feature with two drastic limitations: (1) Nested collection items are limited to a maximum of 5 items. (2) Maximum one nested collection list per page.

Webflow says: "...we’ve added these limitations to ensure optimal performance of your site, but we’re currently gathering feedback, and figuring out the best next enhancements for nesting collections." (Source, April 21, 2020)

finsweet CMS Nest
Ingenious with only minor drawback

The finsweet-Team (I really love them for their awesome work!) provides a more flexible solution for nested Collections. With this solution, you can add more than 1 nested collection on a page and more than 5 items inside the nested collection.

The major advantage of this solution is that it integrates perfectly into the Finsweet ecosystem and can be combined with other attribute solutions developed by Finsweet. Finsweet also provides very good documentation.

The only minor drawback of this solution is that you need to add a second (hidden) collection list at the end of each page where the nested collection should be available. This additional collection holds your reference items and makes your page more structurally complex. The HTML of the respective page contains hidden collections that would not be necessary in the frontend and are only there because Webflow does not provide the required functionality directly within the backend. As a result, the functionality that is actually required in the backend is, so to speak, faked via the frontend.

Depending on the project requirements, it is recommended to test this solution as well as the following jQuery solution to determine which is best suited.

jQuery .load() function
Easy to use without admin hurdles

An easy and lightweight way to nest unlimited collections with unlimited collection items on any single and dynamic page is to use a (simple) jQuery code snippet. This solution was firstly provided by antar (Alex). In basic, the jQuery pulls a multi-reference element from any page into an HTML embed, that works like a nested collection.

You can set up and style your nested collections wherever you want and use them wherever you want! No second plain text field with a comma separated list and no hidden collections are necessary.

This solution is based on the jQuery .load() function - a simple way to fetch data from a server and place the returned HTML into a matching element.

How easy is that! Clone and inspect this project (e.g. the blog example) or read the short documentation to start from scretch ;-).

Benefits

Nested Collections with jQuery .load()

Nested Collection in Webflow
More than 1 Nested Collection
You can add unlimited nested collections on a single page.
Nested Collection in Webflow
More than 5 Items
You can add unlimited items inside your nested collection.
Nested Collection in Webflow
Easy to Manage
No additional CMS fields and no hidden collection list.
Nested Collection in Webflow
Secure
No third party widget and no CORS issues since cross domain loading can not be invoked (i.e. the fetched data must use the same domain).
Nested Collection in Webflow
Light code base
Simple and lightweight jQuery code snippet. No additional external javascripts.
Nested Collection in Webflow
Flexible
Flexible solution with which almost all conceivable constellations of nested collections can be implemented.
Nested Collection with jQuery .load()

Example: Unlimited nested Authors and Tags

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Special use Cases

Multi-Image Gallery & Lightbox

If you want to use the nested collections script in conjunction with a multi-image field, for example to display a gallery with more than 5 photos as a nested collection on a static page, you need a slightly different setup.
For this use case you can find a separate clonable project under the following link, in which a simple photo gallery was included as a nested collection as well as a photo gallery that additionally uses a lightbox component.
NEsted Multi-Image Gallery (with Lightbox component)
Need help?
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions about nested collections in Webflow.
Contact me