Content modeling
CMS (SaaS) is a platform for creating, managing, and delivering content-driven applications. Content can be any type, including pages, text, and media, and you can share it across multiple platforms. Content modeling lets you define your content's structure, relationships, and reusability. Because CMS (SaaS) can deploy your content anywhere, you should model your content in a platform-agnostic way.
What is content modeling?
Content modeling analyzes your content requirements and structures your data into reusable, modular, and maintainable types. See an interactive demo on how to approach content modeling in CMS (SaaS) and Visual Builder.
You define your content model by analyzing your content and breaking down the logical idea of a type of content (such as a press release) into smaller properties (such as title, published date, body, and so on).
- Content type – A group of properties that describe a logical type of content. Content types are the formats your content takes, such as blogs, product pages, case studies, team biographies, and so on. Each type of content you create falls under a distinct content type. Each content type has a unique set of requirements and fields that follow a consistent structure.
- Attribute (properties, fields) – An attribute of data, such as a title, is called a property. Properties are of a specific data type (text, number, date, and so on) and might be governed by more specific validation rules.
Key principles
- Identify core types and relationships – Map out the relationships and dependencies among content.
- Design for reusability – Ensure shared blocks and pages can be reused across the application.
- Separate content from presentation – Define structure based on data, not its visual appearance.
A strong content model provides:
- The precision to ensure your content is accurately described.
- The usability of accurately and easily representing the model to content administrators when creating your content.
- The validation to prevent content anomalies and the resulting experience problems.
- The flexibility to adapt or change the content model as your organization's requirements change.
Best practices
- Prioritize reusability – Avoid duplication by designing modular shared blocks and content types.
- Optimize editor experience – Make schemas intuitive and validation rules clear.
- Future-proof your model – Separate content structure from presentation to adapt to evolving requirements.
Common pitfalls
Avoid modeling content based on visual designs or website layouts. This approach causes rigid structures that lack flexibility. Instead, prioritize modular, reusable content types.
Not all content is structured and can be defined by a single content type. A content item is often an aggregate of multiple underlying content items, forming a composition. For example, a landing page on your website might display information about featured products, the latest company news, and teasers for upcoming events. Each of these elements — the products, news articles, and event teasers — are individual content items, combined into a composite landing page. Representing every compositional page on a website as a unique content type is inefficient. It rapidly increases the number of content types you must maintain without giving the content editor the flexibility they need.
Content model strategies
- Top-down approach – Start from a high-level overview and identify the main types of content you need first (like blogs, product pages, forms, searches, and galleries). Then, you can work down to the individual page's details, one level at a time.
- Bottom-up approach – Begin at the most granular level of detail. Start with the finer elements and group them to form larger content items. For example, consider the text in a call to action (CTA) element, then the CTA object itself, followed by the title and body text. These pieces can then be grouped as a promo box or card.
- Hybrid approach – Combines elements of the top-down and bottom-up methodologies, offering flexibility. Begin with a high-level overview of major content types, then dive into the details for each type. This approach helps maintain the overall structure while addressing specific requirements, such as defining a blog post's fields (title, body, images, and tags).
Properties
Properties define individual data fields within a content type.
Built-in properties
The system provides the following properties for every content type:
- Block property – Represents reusable content blocks.
- Choice property – Gives predefined values like drop-down list options.
- Content property – Links to other content items.
- DateTime property – Stores date and time values.
- Guid property – Stores globally unique identifiers.
- Link property – Represents URLs.
- Number property – Stores numeric values as integers or floating-point numbers.
- Text property – Represents strings (for example, titles or descriptions).
Each property group can have several property types. Use these property types to build named pieces of content for content types. See also Visual Builder concepts.
For example, the Number property has two types:
- Integer – You can create an Age or Street number field.
- Floating point number – You can create a Dollar amount or Interest rate field.
You can define the property type building blocks that suit your organization and application. Different content types can reuse a field, such as Age or Dollar amount, so you do not have to define it repeatedly.
User-defined properties
Added to the page, block, and experience type definitions (in code or from the admin page). See Create a page, Create a block, Create a Visual Builder experience from scratch, and Create a Visual Builder experience from an experience blueprint.
Content types
A content type is a collection of properties for specific use cases, such as blocks, pages, or experiences.
Element content types
Small, focused types for specific functions.
The following diagram shows an example Call To Action element content type containing a Home URL field and a Button Name field. The Home URL field is a link of the URL to page/external address type. The Button Name field is a Simple text box field with a String less than or equal to 255 characters.
The following image shows what the Call To Action content type element may look like when you add it to an experience in Visual Builder.
Block (component) content types
Block content types are reusable, modular pieces of content.
- Inline blocks – Unique to a single page, such as a custom hero section.
- Shared blocks – Reused across multiple pages, such as a consistent event banner.
You can build content types with many properties, such as an Office Location content type with eight text box strings with different names.
The following block, called Global HQ, uses the Office Location content type. Red asterisks (*) indicate that the field is required.
The following image shows what it may look like when you place Global HQ on a page.
📘 Note Because content administrators often cannot modify the schema or visual composition of a block, blocks are not well-suited for larger editorial content. Instead, they are best utilized for data with strong structural dependency among defined properties. This makes blocks effective for scenarios that require consistent formatting and structure.
Page content types
Pages represent structured content accessible through a unique URL. They can combine multiple blocks and include editor-defined fields like rich text and media.
You can build more complex types and organize content into pages. For example, the following image combines a simple Text property (called Office Name), a Content Area (called Office Image), a Block with eight properties (called Office Location), and a Text property with extended rich-text editing features (called Description).
These content types are combined to create a page content type called Corporate Office.
After you create it, Corporate Office displays in the Content Types list as a Page content type.
When you create a new page, Corporate Office displays in the Page Types list.
Select it and fill in the required fields.
📘 Note Content administrators often have limited control over the schema or overall composition of a page. Their primary composition capability is to reorder related block content within a list format. This restriction makes pages less suitable for highly editorialized content, where significant portions are defined at the content item level by the editor.
Experience content types
Experience content types are enhanced page types designed for use in Visual Builder.
Experiences feature the following:
- Grid-based layouts for compositional flexibility.
- Ability to mix structured blocks and editor-defined content.
Go to Settings > Content Types and select Create New > Experience type.
An experience is a predefined Experience content type managed in code, meaning you cannot change its Settings, but you can adjust Permissions and add properties in the All Properties view.
The following images illustrate a Blank experience experience content type with added SEO settings content type to the All Properties view, made from a Block property of the Page SEO Settings property type.
The SEO Settings tab displays in the All Properties view with the Block type.
Media content types (assets)
Assets are uploaded media, such as the following file extensions:
- Images – .jpg, .png, .webp, .svg
- Videos – .mp4, .avi, .mov, .webm
- Other Media – .pdf, .doc, .zip
Unlike other content types, assets are characterized by their inherent binary data. This binary data is the actual file content. While other content types, such as articles or blog posts, mainly consist of text and metadata, assets are fundamentally about the file itself.
Go to Settings > Content Types and select Create New > Media type.
The following images illustrate a Media content type, with a Hero image named media content type, made of a Text property for Alt text and a DateTime property for Copyright.
Content model example
Using the sample Moseybank application from the Create a demo site using CMS (SaaS) and Vercel and Create a demo site using CMS (SaaS) and Netlify walkthroughs, here are some options for modeling content for the masthead banner.
From the image, you can break down the different content of the masthead. There are five pieces of content:
- Image
- Image
- Title
- Main content section
- Call to action (CTA) button
To increase the reusability, you can group these into three content types: image, text, and button. You can design your content model differently depending on the level of control, freedom, and reusability you want to give to CMS (SaaS) users. Here are a few examples:
- All content within a single item – Create a block (component) with the five content types listed separately. This option offers no flexibility for what CMS (SaaS) content managers can control, as everything displays exactly as designed.
- A content holder for different content types – Create a content holder for the masthead and then create content types for images, text, and buttons. This option improves the content type reusability but provides limited control or design freedom.
- Create content types with styling options – Add styling options for the layout and structure of content types, including the image, text, and button content types. This gives more flexibility to the design in CMS (SaaS), letting content types be reused in different combinations across various pages.
As you can see from the previous examples, content modeling offers a range of flexibility, from no freedom to maximum flexibility, reusability, and control.
This example only addresses the masthead banner, but as you design your entire application, you may notice repeating patterns in other sections. For example, pages with titles, text, and buttons can be modeled as reusable content types, saving time in building pages with the same structure.