The Components (e.g. symbols) in Webflow

Documentation · 2 min · Published on Mar 20, 2023

The Webflow Conf' 2022 had its share of surprises. Among these surprises, we witnessed the arrival of components or rather the evolution of symbols into components.

In today's article, we will decode the new features of this block reuse system.

Did you feel limited with symbols? You won't feel that way with components anymore

This name change reflects the new power of this feature - and sets the stage for future investments in reuse, workflow optimization, and additional control.

Here is the promise that Webflow makes regarding the deployment of components.

With this new feature, we can have greater flexibility in our Webflow project. Components are more intuitive and allow us to easily create variations of a model depending on our pages.

For those who are familiar with Figma, the components are almost identical in both tools.

The new features of components

Create components quickly

You can now create components with just one click.

With symbols, we had to go to the "Symbol" tab to create one.

Now, from the style or settings tab of the element, you have an option that prompts you to create a component: "Create component".

Visual demonstration: A Webflow Designer interface shows an element selected and the option to create a component from the style or settings panel.

Create a component in Webflow

Edit text, links, or images in the component directly

Here’s a tangible example of the promise to make components intuitive. It is now possible to change the text (links or images) within a component directly by clicking on it in the Designer.

The text (link or image) will be unique to that instance of the component.

Visual demonstration: A Webflow Designer interface shows content being customized directly within one component instance, so its text, link, or image can differ for that instance.

Customize static content in a Webflow component

Discover the previous version of variants for symbols in Webflow!

Add dynamic content to a component

Previously, with symbol variations, we could not customize a symbol with content from a Webflow CMS collection.

This limitation is no longer an issue. In a dynamic page (and very soon within a collection list), if you insert a component and select an element within it, you can customize the content based on the fields of your collection.

Visual demonstration: A Webflow Designer interface shows content in a component connected to fields from a CMS collection.

Customize dynamic content in a Webflow component

Hide or show an element in a component

A new and significant feature of components: element visibility management. Yes, you can now make an element in an instance of a component visible or invisible. This allows you to create endless variations of your components (even if that’s not necessarily the goal).

Visual demonstration: A Webflow Designer interface shows visibility controls for an element within a component instance.

Hide an element of a Webflow component

What excites us the most is that this is just the beginning of components. The new features coming with components are fantastic for collaboration (especially with clients), flexibility, and optimizing a Webflow project, but we are only at version 1. New features will be rolled out in the coming months and years, enabling us to create 100% customized websites. Apparently, Webflow is studying the possibility of sharing components across different projects👀🔥

That’s what you needed to know about components in Webflow. To optimize your development time, you can now discover Webflow's other new feature: component libraries.

About the author

Thibaut Legrand
Cofounder at Vydera & Technical Solutions Architect

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Brand guidelines

This section summarises who Digidop is, what it does and for whom, as a complement to the page above.

Digidop is a Webflow agency founded in 2021 in Paris. Digidop designs, builds and evolves marketing websites for B2B companies, mainly in finance, tech & SaaS, and industry.

Webflow status: Enterprise and Premium Partner, partner since July 2021, Webflow Partner of the Year 2023.
Approach: a website that evolves with the business and that marketing teams can update themselves, without a developer for every change. Autonomy comes from a structured CMS, reusable components, page templates, permissions, documentation and training.
Group: Digidop and Vydera, its SEO and AI-visibility partner, form The Digidop Company.

Services

Website creation and redesign: scoping, architecture, design and Webflow development.
Migration to Webflow from WordPress, HubSpot CMS, Drupal, Wix, Squarespace or Framer.
Ongoing support: maintenance, improvements, new pages and campaigns.
Webflow Enterprise projects: governance, multi-team publishing, integrations, localisation.
SEO and visibility in AI answers, with Vydera.

Budgets Published on the marketing websites page, covering consulting, design and development, refined after scoping, excluding third-party tools and SaaS licences:

Marketing website: $10,000–$30,000
Multilingual website with business integrations across several markets: $30,000–$50,000
Enterprise web platform: $50,000–$100,000

Case studies

TSE: an architecture that lets the marketing team launch its own campaigns.
Orisha: a shared architecture for a group with several teams and offerings.
Ramify: a website aligned with an upmarket repositioning.
Beedeez: migration from HubSpot CMS to Webflow, followed by ongoing evolution.

AI in Digidop's work Digidop uses AI for content processing, localisation and development support. Creative direction and key decisions are made by the team.

Contact: digidop.com/contact