Open Source

Since Drupal CMS aims to enable marketers to build and launch websites quickly, Drupal CMS must offer out-of-the-box content types that are common across our target markets. 

This underlying content structure is the content model. Leading up to DrupalCon Barcelona, the Starshot leadership team highlighted the need to create an initial content strategy for Drupal CMS. Through collaboration with the Drupal CMS UX steering committee, we have developed a content model for the initial release.

These content types will be presented during site setup, and will also be available to add later on. As with much of Drupal CMS, the content types are powered by ‘recipes’, which will provide some additional functionality beyond the content types themselves, such as listing pages, menu links and even default content, where appropriate.

Content types for v1

All Drupal CMS sites will include a Basic page content type by default, to ensure users are able to create content even if they don’t select any of the optional types. In addition to Basic page, the following content types will be available in the initial release:

• Event
• News article
• Blog
• Project
• Case study
• Person profile

For more detailed information about the content types and the process we followed to develop them, please see the full content strategy page.

Cristina Chumillas, the Drupal CMS UX lead, and I would like to thank everyone who contributed to developing this strategy and the accompanying documentation: Megh Plunkett, Emma Horrell, Niklas Missel, Lewis Nyman, Laurens Van Damme and Kat Shaw.

Incorporating SEO into the strategy

Since we’re targeting marketers, we are making search engine optimization a top priority. Drupal CMS will provide an optional recipe for ‘SEO tools‘. By default, sites will have basic SEO functionality in place, such as default path alias patterns, hreflang metadata, and the ability to manage redirects.

The SEO tools recipe provides additional functionality such as meta tags, XML sitemap, and real-time SEO analysis of content. 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. 

Drupal CMS content beyond v1

Once the initial content types are available, we will work on expanding the content model in the second phase for later releases of Drupal CMS. Adding to the content model iteratively allows us to gather user feedback, make improvements, and adjust accordingly. We have some ideas for which additional content types to include later, and will have a better understanding of what content types are most desired once people begin building Drupal CMS sites.

If you have feedback on this proposed content strategy, or questions about it, please add it to this issue. We are planning to test this with users from the Drupal CMS target personas, and will provide more information when the testing is confirmed.