Why Planning a Website Content Model Is Itself a Valuable Exercise

When building a complex Drupal site, be it mid to large-sized site, to have as many as a dozen content types, there's a lot that goes into keeping track of all of them.

Planning out how the entire site's content model and build will look is itself a valuable exercise. This not only reduces errors but also improves overall consistency and quality that we now use for all sites to aid in planning. When it comes to Drupal, it is extremely configurable step one of a new site is to start pushing buttons- so what we actually want to do? How does it work?

There are a number of ancillary benefits in planning to automate an entire Drupal website development.

• Allows easier identification of all possible custom modules required, starting from Field types, formatters, Views plugins, etc.

• Identifying hidden custom code early and factor into the budget or into design changes, as appropriate

• Allow the entire team to review the content model at-a-glance to see how all of the moving parts fit together besides checking the potential pitfalls

• Developers, those who are joining a project in the mid can get a clearer picture of the site they're inheriting, its development phase, and more importantly why.

• It’s harder to forget about the important UX details such as help text, field settings, and other little details in-your-face

• With proper planning strategy, the design and development greatly reducing "oh, we haven't built that part yet" problems avoiding too many context switches from "build headspace" to "code headspace" 

• Can be completed at once, showing the client early progress.

• Image style settings help to ensure that information is figured out early and in a consistent manner.

Summing up, this is actually the biggest benefit of this approach and therefore gives it a whirl on your next Drupal site making your life easier.