Why Relume uses Client-First

In this doc you’ll learn:

1. What is Client-First
2. The various benefits behind Client-First
3. The key reasons that Relume is built with Client-First

Imagine this…

You’ve got your first client project and you just jump right in and start building…and it probably looks something like this (see image below). Div Block 3, Image 2, container-large 4  oof! We’ve all been there. Some could argue thats the best way to learn…dive right in. But now you are wondering how to organize this chaos?

What is Client-First

To avoid the mess and complexity of classes and structure, Client-First is a set of guidelines and strategies for developing websites in Webflow. Client-First will help keep your Webflow projects organized and creates a common structure and naming convention for your classes.

Client-First was developed by Finsweet. An Webflow agency-first company that now also makes products for the Webflow community like:

• Finsweet Attributes, for adding functionality to your Webflow projects.
• Wized, for creating web apps using Webflow.
• Chrome extension, for streamlining your Webflow workflow.

Amongst a few other products. Finsweet has consistently been a leader in the Webflow space building enterprise level projects for major brands and companies.

Like most Finsweet products, Client-First was born out of the need to solve a problem they were facing while building Webflow sites at scale and working with large organizations with in-house teams that could technically maintain the website once it was finished.

This context is important because while it says “Client-First” it doesn’t always mean that your client is equipped with the right skills to pick up your project and run with it. However, it certainly does set your project up for success because of how Client-First is structured and the opinions in the strategy.

Read more about Client-First

The various benefits behind Client-First

At Relume, in our agency days, we made an intentional decision to use Client-First for these reasons:

• Naming conventions were easy to understand by everyone involved and don’t need to be decoded
• It delivered on what it promised - keeping our projects organized.
• Clear and comprehensive documentation
• It had a huge following very quickly (for the reasons above) and now has a networking effect - the more people that are using it, the more developers that are familiar with how to build or maintain a Client-First website.
• Lastly the approach takes into account numerous unique quirks of working with Webflow specifically

These are just some of the key reasons for why Relume was an early-adopter of Client-First.

Let’s dive into some of these points a bit more.

Naming conventions

Unlike other strategies, Client-First took the approach of keeping things very simple and in plain language. As apposed to a lot of other strategies are using acronyms and shorthand for spacing and structure. Which is fine if you understand them very well, but upon immediately reading them, they are not clear.

Heading H1

h1

fs1

vs

heading-style-h1

When running a business or managing a team, ideally we wanted the simplest and most easily adoptable approach.

This was important for Relume because we are building these components so that anybody can build a website quickly and still understand how things are structured. And even a Webflow veteran can still mold the strategies to their preferences. Its a solid foundation from which everyone can start from that is made clear and concise about structure and direction.

In short, you will have less questions about what is built and how it’s been built.

Keeping projects organized

Because of the naming conventions and the idea of folders, we are able to create a repeatable, predictable organizational system to our projects. It doesn’t matter which project you go into, they’ll all have the same basic structure. Within minutes you should have a full understanding of how the website was built, what sections and pages there are in the project, and be able to jump right into making changes.

Documentation

Of all the currently available strategies for building Webflow websites, Client-First has the most thorough and clearest documentation. This makes understanding what Client-First is (or isn’t) and how to use it, very easy and clear. This also helps onboard more and more developers to using it, growing the network effect.

Large community

With over 100,000 clones of the style guide, the numbers don’t lie.  Pair this number up with our cloneable and you have almost 200,000 clones. Even if a quarter of those were unique, that is a very large network of developers who are familiar with Client-First. More people using it, means more support and a more adoptable system when collaborating.

The key reasons that Relume is built with Client-First

Our components are built with Client-First because it provided clarity, consistency, and enabled collaboration. Because of Client-First, everyone on the team was speaking the same language. We have less decisions that need to be made. And we can focus on making unique, functional, and easily repeatable components at scale.

Having the compounding effects of a community who is passionate about Client-First with new users joining every day meant that Relume’s community was also growing (and vice versa).

To summarize:

• Naming conventions are simple, straight-forward and in plain language.
• The strategy delivers on its promise to keep your project organized and maintainable.
• Clear documentation makes it easy to understand how to use the system and to bring in more users to the system quickly.
• The compounding effects of a community-driven strategy like Client-First has a rippling effect across the Webflow ecosystem.

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