How to Ensure Jetboost Works Correctly Behind a Reverse Proxy

Overview

As a Jetboost user, you rely on seamless integration with Webflow to offer enhanced filtering, searching, and sorting functionalities for CMS items on your website. However, if you've set up a reverse proxy to manipulate URLs for SEO or other purposes, you may encounter issues like duplicate or missing CMS items. This article explains why these issues can occur and how you might resolve them.

Why Reverse Proxies Can Cause Issues

Broken Pagination Handling

Webflow uses query parameters in the URL (such as ?collectionID_page=2 ) to manage pagination for CMS collection lists.

When sites attempt to use Webflow behind a reverse proxy, it can break pagination for collection lists, which in turn will cause Jetboost to not work properly.

If the reverse proxy does not correctly handle and forward these query strings:

• Clicking the "Next" button may update the URL, but the page continues to display the same CMS items from page 1.
• Since Jetboost depends on Webflow's pagination working properly, it may repeatedly detect only the first page of items. This can result in duplicate items appearing in your results and missing items that were supposed to load from later pages.

Potential Problems

1. Duplicate CMS Items: The same CMS items from page 1 appear again across multiple pages.
2. Missing Items: Items from later pages do not appear because the pagination isn't loading correctly.

How to Address This

Ensure Proper Query String Handling

• Your reverse proxy must be configured to preserve and correctly forward query parameters — particularly pagination parameters like ?collectionID_page=2 .
• Each pagination URL generated by Webflow should load the correct set of CMS items.

Test Pagination Behavior Without JavaScript

• Disable JavaScript in your browser and manually click through your CMS pagination links.
• Each page should load a different set of CMS items.
• If clicking "Next" continues to show the same items from page 1, it is likely the proxy is not handling query strings properly.

Validate on the Webflow Staging Domain

• Before launching updates on your custom domain, test Jetboost functionality on your Webflow staging domain (e.g., yourproject.webflow.io ).
• If everything works correctly on the staging domain but not on the custom domain, it is likely due to an issue with the reverse proxy configuration.