Webflow is a powerful, collaborative visual content management system (CMS). As such, there are several different authoring roles that can be assigned to the members of your team, depending on what tasks those team members need to accomplish within your Webflow website.

You may have heard of these more traditional Webflow roles: Editor, designer, and especially developer. We talk more about all of them in detail here.

But did you know that there’s another, extremely powerful hybrid role just for Enterprise-level users?

It’s called Webflow limited designer.

And as a tried and true Webflow agency, we’re exceptionally excited to share our insights about the benefits of this role, and what it means for the vast array of Webflow design features.

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Why is the Webflow limited designer role important?

Before we dive into the nitty gritty of the technical implications of a limited designer role, let’s set the scene with a feeling. Imagine this:

You’ve toiled to complete a Webflow build — QA and all — and just handed it off to your client. Or, if you’re working internally, you’ve gone through a big redesign and just handed it off to the rest of your team. Either way, someone is using Webflow to work on the site. They’re in the file. They’re making updates. But – what’s that? Resounding frustration permeates your cubicle wall and DMs: “What just broke? What happened here? I don’t understand… that was working yesterday! What’s going on?!”

A broken site can pretty much seem like the end of the world. While painful, the moral of this story is that, if not managed correctly among users, even Webflow can be fragile.

But here’s how the idea behind limited designer can help put your mind at ease.

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What’s the scope of a limited designer role?

As explained by Webflow, the limited designer role was created specifically for use within larger teams, or Enterprise-tier users starting to work with Webflow in a group setting.

Within that group, team members assigned the limited designer role can create new classes, and even build and edit pages with existing classes and components – they just can’t modify those existing classes and components. (Check out this article)to learn more about Webflow’s component updates, and why we think they’re pretty great.)

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What does the limited designer role mean for your team?

Being able to lock down roles and permissions within a workspace means that no one has to worry about accidentally tinkering with the existing CSS, breaking layouts, or (even worse) deleting the whole site! Each of those scenarios has the potential to accumulate vast technical debt for a build. Hear Edgar Allan’s own Mason Poe talk more about this on our webshow, EA Live!

In short, assigning limited designer roles can help protect your site while at the same time giving those select team members the confidence to design in a limited capacity – without worrying about developer-level consequences, since a limited designer can’t actually publish the site.

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How can a framework enhance the abilities of the limited designer role?

Frameworks are paramount when building an environment in which our designers can thrive. That’s why, at Edgar Allan, we built our own framework called Knockout, which happens to pair perfectly with the limited designer role.

Both have the same failsafes in mind, enabling your team to easily build and edit anything — with the least amount of complexity, but without the worry of breaking it!

Knockout has unique features like a responsive grid, conversational class naming, viewport optimization, and adaptivity (just to name a few) that help designers in large teams set the overall design language of a site.

Users assigned the Webflow designer role can easily and efficiently define everything from headline sizes to margin widths and in-page breakers. From there, they can assign other roles, including limited designer and editor — all with the confidence that they (and only they) have total control of the site design.

The result? With more people involved in the site, your team has more flexibility… while still maintaining peace of mind that your site won’t go up in flames.

And after all, did destroying your computer ever really solve anything? We didn’t think so!

‍Are you part of an Enterprise organization and want to learn more about the benefits of Webflow, limited designer role, and Knockout? We want to hear from you!

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