Webflow CMS & Collection Lists

Random, Dynamic List Sorting

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Sometimes it's nice to be able to feature things randomly on a page... a few random customer testimonials, or some featured products for example.

Maybe you have a photo gallery, but you want to mix up those tiles regularly to make it more interesting.

Webflow introduced random sorting for Collection Lists in 2016. To use it, just select your Collection List in the designer and set the sorting to-

Random order, shuffle

Currently, I

Best Practices & Limitations

Random + Limit

I use this feature often in sidebar views, where e.g. I want to show 2 testimonials, but I want them to change automatically.

To do use, use random order, with limit = 2 on that Collection List. These two work together beautifully.

Then below that list, you can add a link to view all which takes them to the all testimonials page.

How often does it refresh?

Note that the random ordering will update every 12 hours, and generally not on each visit.

If you want sorting to be more frequent, you can do the sorting client-side.

Don't use pagination

Importantly, random and pagination do not work together.

You'll be able to page, but the items you'll see on each page are reported to contain duplicates.

References

https://discourse.webflow.com/t/cms-random-sorting/20206/9?u=waldo

https://webflow.com/feature/random-dynamic-list-sorting#:~:text=Just%20choose%20%22Random%20order%22%20as,CMS%2C%20and%20on%20published%20sites.

https://university.webflow.com/lesson/sort-collection-lists

Overview
CMS Basics
Strongly-typed Data-binding
11:45
101
Sorting Collection Lists
Sorting by OPTION & REF Fields
13:43
201
Random, Dynamic List Sorting
202
Filtering Collection Lists
Filtering Collection Lists
11:45
250
Working with Collection Lists
How Collection List Pagination Works
3:46
301
Unbinding Collection Lists
3:46
302
Hide an Entire Section w/ Empty Collection Lists
7:00
303
Nesting Collection Lists
304
Display Filename for Download
Int
305
Collection Lists & Custom Code
How to Store Custom Code in a CMS Text Field
Int
400
How to Bind CMS fields to Custom Attributes
Int
401
Collection Pages
Collection Pages
501
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