Drupal CMS aims to enable marketers to build and launch websites quickly. Marketers will choose which features they want their site to have, and then start adding content to their site. In order to support this, Drupal CMS will offer content types that are common across our target markets. This underlying content structure of content types is the content model.
Content model for Drupal CMS v1 vs v2
The initial content model outlined here includes the seven content types that many sites need for their content: Event, Person profile, Basic page, News article, Blog, Project, Case study. Once the initial content types are available, we will work on expanding the content model in the second phase. By adding to the content model in an iterative manner, we will be able to gather user feedback, make improvements, and adjust the content model accordingly. We have ideas for which additional content types to include in v2. We will have a better understanding of what content types will be most useful to add once people begin building Drupal CMS sites.
Content types
The content types in the initial release use a priority guide format. Priority guides are an alternative to wireframes that are “content-first, with a strong focus on providing best value for users” – A List Apart . We chose to use priority guides instead of wireframes because they emphasize content hierarchy and user-needs and avoid discussions around UI. They are also lower fidelity and faster to modify than wireframes.
Each priority guide is a single column. The title and description at the top of the priority guide indicate the content type name, and briefly what kind of content it is intended to be used for. Each field in the priority guide is represented as a rectangle, with the field name in the center. For example, the first field on each priority guide is the content type’s title field. An asterisk “*” following the field name and a red border indicate that the field is required. The fields that follow the title complete the content type.
Each content type includes additional fields added by the ‘SEO tools recipe’. Tokens will use any content provided in those fields. If content is not provided, the content falls back to the content type's title, description and image.
The complete priority guide diagram key is at the end of this section.
Basic page
All Drupal CMS sites will include a Basic page content type by default, to ensure marketers are able to create content even if they don't select any of the optional types. Basic page content provides information about a topic to the intended audience.
The Basic page content type includes these fields:
- Title
- Description
- Featured image
- Body
- Tags
- SEO tools (optional)
Event
The recurring event feature is not enabled by default, but would be available if the user has opted in to this functionality.
News article and Blog
The News article and Blog content types have the same data structure, but providing them under two names can serve different audiences. Different user groups have different requirements and expectations around naming. By providing both, we ensure that users are able to select what is familiar to them.
It also means the content types can evolve separately, both in Drupal CMS as it develops, and on users' sites. Though we expect that users will usually choose one of the two, some may want to use both. A site might want a News section that is for more formal articles, and a Blog that is for more casual posts. In all cases, users will be able to adapt and extend the content types to suit their specific purposes.
Project and Case study
The Project and Case study content types also have the same data structure, but providing them under two names can serve different audiences.
Person profile
This is the diagram key to understand what each field is on the priority guides.
Content model discovery
Leading up to DrupalCon Barcelona, the Starshot leadership team highlighted the need to create an initial content model for Drupal CMS. Through collaboration with the Drupal CMS UX steering committee, we have developed a content model for the initial release.
The process of developing this content model started with identifying example scenarios (a community group site, a portfolio site, and a small business selling services site), identifying what content is common on those sites, and what fields would be expected on each content type at minimum.
We also consulted the Schema.org types list to inform and validate some of our assumptions. We established the shared fields to have across all content types, and which of those would interact with the ‘SEO recipe’. For meta tag optimization, this recipe also adds three new fields to each content type: SEO title, SEO description and SEO image. Currently these fields are in a collapsed fieldset on the node form, and are optional. If content is not provided, the meta tags will fall back to use the node title, description and featured image.
