Content modeling

Content modeling is the practice of organizing your website’s content so it works for your audience and for the team that maintains it. A solid content model keeps a site usable at 10 pages or 10,000, and the decisions you make here shape how you use every other Drupal CMS feature.

Understand your goals and audience

Start by defining what the website needs to achieve. Consider your audience, your organization’s requirements, and how the content will be managed: how content editors update the site, and what kind of experience you want visitors to have.

Identify the types of content

Break down the different kinds of information you will work with. These might include:

• Content types, such as articles, events, or products.
• Media, such as images, videos, or audio.
• Taxonomy: categories for grouping and organizing content.
• User roles and permissions, which determine what tasks each user can perform.

Define the fields

For each type of content, decide what specific details you need to store. An article might need a title, body text, and an image. Fields can be simple (plain text) or more structured (a selection from a dropdown list).

Connect related content

Content types and taxonomies often connect through references that reflect how they relate. A wine tour (content type) might belong to a region (taxonomy term). A blog post could be written by an author (user) and relate to a wine tour (content type).

Where to go next

• How Drupal CMS structures content maps these ideas to the terms and features you use to build the model.
• An example content model works through a complete model for a wine tour site.
• Entities, bundles, and fields explains the data model underneath, for developers.