Your First Content Structure

Planning your content structure

Before you start building, take 15 minutes to map out what content your site actually needs. The goal is not to model everything — just the content that changes regularly or appears in multiple places.

Step 1: List your content types

Open a blank document and write down every type of content on your site. Be specific:

• Blog posts
• Team members
• Client logos
• Testimonials
• Services
• Case studies
• Job openings
• FAQ items

Do not worry about fields yet. Just get the list down.

Step 2: Identify relationships

Look at your list and ask: which items reference each other?

• Blog posts have authors (team members).
• Case studies reference clients and services.
• Events have speakers (team members or a separate collection).
• Job openings belong to departments.

Draw lines between them. These relationships will become reference fields in your collections.

Step 3: Decide what gets its own page

Not every collection needs its own page. Some content only appears as cards, lists, or inline elements:

• Own page: Blog posts, case studies, team member bios, events.
• Card/list only: Testimonials, FAQ, client logos, stats.
• Both: Services (listed on homepage, each has a detail page).

This decision affects which fields you need. Items with their own pages need SEO fields (meta title, meta description) and richer body content.

Step 4: Start with 3-5 collections

Resist the urge to model everything at once. Start with the collections that:

1. Have the most content (blog posts, team members).
2. Are referenced by other collections (authors, categories).
3. Change most frequently (events, job openings).

You can always add more collections later. It is much harder to restructure existing content than to add new collections.

Step 5: Define fields for each collection

For each collection, list the fields you need. Group them:

• Required — fields every item must have (title, slug, at least one identifying field).
• Recommended — fields most items should have (featured image, date, category).
• Optional — fields for edge cases (SEO overrides, social images, internal notes).

Keep it lean. Every field you add is a field someone has to fill out. If a field is rarely used, make it optional or skip it entirely.

Common mistakes

1. Over-modeling — creating collections for content that rarely changes. If your "About" page text changes once a year, it does not need a collection.
2. Flat structures — putting everything in one giant collection instead of splitting related content into separate collections with references.
3. Ignoring display context — adding rich text body fields to collections that only appear as cards (you will never use that body content).
4. Skipping the primary field — every collection needs one field that uniquely identifies items. Without it, admin interfaces and reference dropdowns are unusable.