Hi friends 👋🏻

This week's topic: content types, and when it makes sense to branch out beyond just pages and posts on your website.

This is part of a series in which I'm writing about the process of refreshing the Blue Hills Digital website.​ I introduced the project in my Digital Landscape email on May 20. If you missed it, read that email here!

Want links to recent emails or a sign-up link to share? Go to The Digital Landscape sign-up page​

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What do I mean by content types?

Websites are collections of URLs, all organized around a single domain.

A really simple website might just be a single page, or a small collection of pages. And those pages could contain all kinds of different content.

Typically, the next level of complexity on a website is when you start publishing regular updates (think blog posts). Instead of publishing a new page for every update and manually adding those new pages, in date order, to a parent page, it makes sense to have a content type specifically for these regular posts.

Most popular content management systems (CMSs) come with "page" and "post" content types out of the box.

• Pages are intended for relatively static content that only changes infrequently.
• Posts share common characteristics like a title, a date, some body copy, perhaps an excerpt, and can be organized by author, and taxonomies like "tags" or "categories".

Because posts are set up as a separate content type, it makes it easier to display a "blog" or "news" landing page with an archive of posts, typically displayed in date order.

When to add more content types?

Often these default content types are enough.

But sometimes, you'll realize that you have a collection of similar content on your website that it would make sense to organize as a separate, custom content type.

Here are a few pointers that you might be ready for a custom content type. You have a lot of content where:

• Each item will be entered separately (and will likely have it's own URL)
• The items share a common set of data fields
• You want to display all the items in a list or grid on a parent page
• You want to allow users to filter or sort the items
• You want to automatically display the content in other places on the website but only have to update the items in one central location

Here are a few real-world examples where custom content types make sense!

• Events. This is one of the most common! Events have start and end dates/times and locations (common data fields), and you want to display them on a calendar or date-ordered list. You probably also want to filter them to exclude events that have already happened.
• Products. Another obvious one! Any ecommerce store is using a product content type, with fields for price, number in stock, etc.
• Resources. When building nonprofit websites, I often build resource libraries, with content organized by specific topics or formats.

Can I see some examples?

Sure! I've listed a few examples that I've built below, and I'm currently working on a couple more that I can share later this year.

Fun examples in the works right now include a dog adoption website with a "Dog Profile" custom content type, and a music project website with a "Musician" custom content type 🐶 🎻

• The Christensen Institute has a resource library, organized by topic, research area, and content format.
• TennGreen has a directory of land conservation projects, displayed on a map and with project profiles. The map display is made possible by data fields that provide a location for each project.
• The National Sailing Hall of Fame has a custom content type for Hall of Fame inductees, organized by class year, and with a whole set of specific data fields.

What does this mean for the Blue Hills website?

One of the big clean steps I'm undertaking for the Blue Hills Digital website is tackling a mess of content related to resource downloads.

Over the years, as I've come up with free or paid resources, I've just created a new page for each one and slapped them on the website! Exactly what I would advise clients NOT to do 🤣

This is messy because the resources all have some shared fields (featured image, download link, cost, etc.), and they are promoted in lots of different spots across the website. This means that if I need to update one of those fields, I have to find all the places across the website where that resource is referenced and make the change in multiple places. MESSY and time consuming.

Currently I'm working on migrating these resources into a dedicated Resource content type.

This will allow me to easily generate a "Resources" page that will display a grid of all current and future resources, and to create little resource promotion blocks that I can insert into other articles and guides across the website. Then when I need to refresh an image or a download link, those fields will automatically update everywhere.

This isn't rocket science – I set this up for client websites all the time. I'm just finally getting around to applying the same level of organization for my own website.

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If you have questions about whether a chunk of content on your website would make sense to move into a custom post type, hit reply and ask away!

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