By mark_ian_newton on

Hi All,

There seems to be a fair bit of documentation about this subject. However I don't see much about design in terms of related content types.

So I plan on making a website with a LOT (potentially over 15) custom content types (I which I plan to implement using the UI in drupal rather than coding from scratch). How would people recommend planning this out (I was planning to link these together with the entity reference module).

  • I written a small problem statement - basically the idea of my site.
  • A normalized entity relationship diagram
  • data dictionary
  • Some story boards

I see the actual data that I store as being extremely important to my site, and want to try to produce something thats easy to document and easy to maintain. Is there anything that I am missing from the above list? Has anyone got any ideas they feel that I would benefit from?

Thanks in advance,

Mark.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

I do this myself in main site I maintain-- currently over 20 content types. Some of them relate to each other, but most are siblings of a single parent (all 'child' content type have an entityreference point to the parent). It works great and makes for hugely powerful and flexible app.

One thing I will do in the next version though, is refactor most of the content types that reference each other into taxonomies with the desired fields. Things like "vendor" and "location" which are basically glorified select lists work better as taxonomies imo (i create a custom admin screen for them with context_admin).

There are lots of ways to enhance this type of configuration. My favorites are references_dialog, entityreference_multiple, and inline_entity_form.

mark_ian_newton’s picture

mark_ian_newton commented

Thanks for your replay WorldFallz.

Its more the planning side of it, and the structures that I was looking at really. I figure the way you can create custom content types now in Drupal 7 is really powerful, and I don't really see why you would want to code your own content types. Thanks for the userful modules you mention using.

But I imagine, as with everything to do with a database, that normalizing your data structures and documenting everything makes for a better more manageable site? I guess I am sort of answering my own question really. I will have to create some Entiry Relationship diagrams and try and get everything to at least 3rd normal form or BCNF (Normalized).

Although I do wonder if I would be better trying to go down an Object Orientated route, as that seems to be the way that Drupal 8 is going? What do you guys all think?

Thanks again in advance,

Mark.