Happy editors make better content

By Janus Boye

Too often, content models are developed with no consideration of the system in which they have to operate. This leads to a horrible editorial experience, which is one of the overlooked topics in today’s digital workplace.

In Real World Content Modelling, the new book by Deane Barker, he examines how content actually gets modeled inside a content management system.

According to Deane, content strategists tend to develop the content model in a bubble, as they don’t know which system the content will go into. No content strategist is an expert in every single CMS and this leads to problems down the road as it is often a challenge to get a content model to fit into the given CMS.

In our recent member conference call, Deane talked about the work that led up to the new book, introduced us to the topic of real world content modelling and what’s in his field guide. We also had time for questions and answers.

Content Modelling is a deep topic and Deane managed to raise a series of questions that needs answering for any implementation. Questions that indeed have gone either totally undocumented so far or left within the realm of specific agency/vendor implementations.

Here’s some additional notable takeaways from the call

  • When looking at a CMS, Deane first reviews the built-in content model to understand the content design behind the system.

  • The headless CMS market is still a bit immature. Still solving some of the content model problems that the traditional CMS world have solved

  • Content Models are now defined in code, which makes it more manageable when the model changes

You can view the full 29-minute recording below. It’s without slides, so all you’ll see is the beautiful book cover.

Learn more about content modelling

Deane recommended the book Designing Connected Content, which we covered with one of the authors a few months ago.

To better understand the journey and thinking that led to writing the book, have a look at these two:

Finally, you can also meet Deane in person in our CMS Expert group.

PS: Deane has also written a few other books - check his page Books by Deane Barker