Content modeling is the process of creating a logical taxonomy structure for the content you create and distribute online. It involves assembling content types into a content model, which helps teams organize workflows, align on goals, and ensure all necessary elements are present in each piece of content. Source
What is a content model?
A content model documents all the different types of content you will have for a given project. It contains detailed definitions of each content type’s elements and their relationships to each other. For example, a Blog Post model might include fields like Title, Description, Author, and Date. Source
What are the essential elements present in modeling content?
Essential elements in content modeling include fields (such as text, assets, relations, and geographical points) that store or describe content. Hygraph distinguishes between Subject Models (which contain structured content for presentation layers) and Specification Models (which clarify how information is presented). Sortable Relations allow editors to rearrange related content flexibly. Source
What are the steps for modeling content?
Steps for modeling content include: 1) Gathering stakeholders from design, development, content, and business teams; 2) Aligning on key questions about information, workflow, and goals; 3) Creating initial content model diagrams; 4) Iterating and testing models collaboratively using tools like Miro or Google Docs. Source
What are some good strategies for content modeling?
Effective strategies include top-down (starting with intended outcomes and high-level structure), bottom-up (focusing on reusable details and modularity), divorcing page builder mentality (thinking beyond web pages), and balancing modularity with presentation-centric models. Collaborative approaches and field descriptions help ensure clarity and reusability. Source
Features & Capabilities
What features does Hygraph offer?
Hygraph provides a GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, scalability, and a flexible API. Key features include sortable relations, a wide range of field types, integrations with popular platforms (Netlify, Vercel, Shopify, AWS S3, Cloudinary, etc.), and enterprise-grade security. Learn more
Does Hygraph support integrations with other platforms?
Yes, Hygraph offers integrations with hosting and deployment platforms (Netlify, Vercel), eCommerce solutions (Shopify, BigCommerce, commercetools), localization tools (Lokalise, Crowdin, EasyTranslate, Smartling), digital asset management (Aprimo, AWS S3, Bynder, Cloudinary, Mux, Scaleflex Filerobot), personalization (Ninetailed), AI (AltText.ai), and more. See full list
Does Hygraph provide an API?
Yes, Hygraph offers a powerful GraphQL API for efficient content fetching and management. Developers can use the API Explorer and GraphQL mutations to query and update content programmatically. API Reference
How does Hygraph optimize content delivery performance?
Hygraph emphasizes rapid content distribution and responsiveness, which improves user experience, engagement, and search engine rankings. Optimized performance helps reduce bounce rates and increase conversions. Learn more
Security & Compliance
What security and compliance certifications does Hygraph have?
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. It offers features like SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and sandbox environments to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory standards. Security Features
Pricing & Plans
What is Hygraph's pricing model?
Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. For full details, visit the pricing page.
Use Cases & Benefits
Who can benefit from using Hygraph?
Hygraph is ideal for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. It serves modern software companies, enterprises seeking to modernize, and brands aiming to scale, improve development velocity, or re-platform from legacy solutions. Source
What business impact can customers expect from using Hygraph?
Customers can expect time savings through streamlined workflows, ease of use, faster speed-to-market, and enhanced customer experience via consistent and scalable content delivery. These benefits help businesses modernize their tech stack and achieve operational efficiency. Source
What industries are represented in Hygraph's case studies?
Hygraph's case studies span food and beverage (Dr. Oetker), consumer electronics (Samsung), automotive (AutoWeb), healthcare (Vision Healthcare), travel and hospitality (HolidayCheck), media and publishing, eCommerce, SaaS (Bellhop), marketplace, education technology, and wellness and fitness. See case studies
Can you share specific customer success stories using Hygraph?
Yes. Komax achieved 3X faster time to market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform, and Dr. Oetker enhanced their digital experience using MACH architecture. Explore more success stories
How easy is it to get started with Hygraph?
Hygraph is designed for quick onboarding, even for non-technical users. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months. Users can sign up for a free account and access documentation, tutorials, and onboarding guides. Documentation
What feedback have customers given about Hygraph's ease of use?
Customers praise Hygraph for its intuitive interface and ease of use, noting that even non-technical users can start using it right away. The UI is described as logical and user-friendly for both technical and non-technical teams. Source
Pain Points & Solutions
What problems does Hygraph solve?
Hygraph addresses operational pains (reliance on developers, outdated tech stacks, conflicting global team needs, clunky content creation), financial pains (high costs, slow speed-to-market, expensive maintenance, scalability challenges), and technical pains (boilerplate code, overwhelming queries, evolving schemas, cache and OpenID integration issues). Learn more
How does Hygraph solve pain points for different personas?
For developers: Hygraph reduces boilerplate code and streamlines query management. For content creators/project managers: It offers an intuitive interface for independent content updates. For business stakeholders: It lowers operational costs, supports scalability, and accelerates speed to market. Source
What KPIs and metrics are associated with the pain points Hygraph solves?
KPIs include time saved on content updates, system uptime, consistency across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, time to market, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. See more on CMS KPIs
Support & Implementation
What support and training does Hygraph offer?
Hygraph provides 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance. All users have access to documentation, video tutorials, webinars, and a community Slack channel. Contact Support
How does Hygraph handle maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting?
Hygraph offers 24/7 support for maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting. Enterprise customers benefit from dedicated onboarding and expert guidance, while all users can access documentation and community resources. Contact Support
Product Information & Documentation
Where can I find Hygraph's technical documentation?
Comprehensive technical documentation is available at Hygraph Documentation, covering everything needed to build and deploy projects.
Customer Proof & Case Studies
Who are some of Hygraph's customers?
Hygraph is trusted by leading brands including Sennheiser, HolidayCheck, Ancestry, Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Epic Games, Bandai Namco, Gamescom, Leo Vegas, and Clayton Homes. See case studies
Vision & Mission
What is Hygraph's vision and mission?
Hygraph's vision is to unify data and enable content federation, empowering businesses to create impactful digital experiences. Its mission is to remove traditional content management pain points through a GraphQL-native architecture, helping companies modernize tech stacks and deliver exceptional digital experiences at scale. About Us
In this guide, we cover the essentials of content modeling, including a step-by-step path to start and scale, as well as proven best practices.
Written by Bryan
on Nov 16, 2020
Content is everywhere. From product packaging to videos, blogs, and data-driven experiences like Netflix. It’s the force that powers how we communicate, learn, and make decisions online.
Recognizing that even product information and metadata are part of the content ecosystem opens new possibilities: better collaboration, richer user experiences, and more precise business results.
At the heart of this transformation is content modeling: the discipline that turns content chaos into a scalable system. In this guide, we cover the essentials of content modeling, including a step-by-step path to start and scale, as well as proven best practices.
The content model describes the type of content you want to create, how it relates to each other, and how it can be edited within your system.
Each model type is composed of multiple fields or data types such as strings, numbers, dates, assets, references, booleans, and even rich text. These primitives not only enable a CMS to display proper editing fields but also allow developers to have confidence in the output of each model.
A content model documents all the different types of content you will have for a given project. It contains detailed definitions of each content type’s elements and their relationships to each other.
RL
Rachel LovingerSenior Director, Content Design at Publicis Sapient
Content modeling can help teams prioritize content goals and create a high-level overview of the content types they will create. These content models also provide structure for the content teams to understand what necessary pieces of information must be present in each content entry.
Flexible content models can help encourage the production of reusable, adaptable content, making the content team’s job more efficient where relevant.
An effective set of content models affects more than just the content or editorial team; it can significantly impact how well a team communicates with users.
Designers: Utilize content models to structure their designs and determine which content elements will be displayed in the presentation layer.
Content teams: Build efficient workflows and ensure all essential information is captured in the content model.
Developers: Create resilient content models that can adapt to changing project outcomes without requiring time-intensive rework.
Business development teams: Rely on content to reflect agreed-upon goals, outcomes, and KPIs.
Users and customers: Should be able to find the information they need easily and intuitively.
Content modeling is a core component of any project, shaping how both developers and editors work on a day-to-day basis. No matter how much work your CMS has put into a solid editor or developer experience, it can be ruined by a subpar content model. Without proper structure, the data becomes a slog to edit, modify, and access.
Content modeling is best done early in a project’s lifecycle, typically by developers or product managers. Early decisions have a significant impact on the entire project, so it’s worthwhile to invest time in careful planning and preparation.
In systems like Hygraph, models can be adjusted later, and features such as environments make changes more manageable. However, the further along a project is, the more disruptive and resource‑intensive changes become. Major adjustments can trigger content migrations, which are possible but costly in terms of manual entry or the development of migration scripts.
By designing a future‑proof content model from the outset, you minimize these risks and avoid unnecessary rework as your website, app, product, or campaign evolves.
Content modeling is not the domain of a single person. With as many business areas and priorities as the model touches, a team should always be consulted. Depending on your project, here’s a list of teams or members that should be involved in the modeling process:
Content editor — The primary user of your CMS. When creating a model, their needs are important to keep content flowing at the right cadence.
Designer — Whether you start with the content model, wireframes, visual designs, or code, the team designing your project should be involved in thinking through the design of your content as well.
Business leader — This may take the shape of your CEO, the lead stakeholder of your project, or some other person in your organization. Those who are looking out for the business needs should have a seat at the table.
Development team — Whoever is building the project needs to keep an eye on how the API will take shape. While poor content modeling can hinder content entry, it can also impact developer efficiency. At worst, it can also directly affect the performance of your application for end users if it is built inefficiently.
Content strategist/designer — If you’re one of the lucky few to have a strategist or content designer on staff, this person should be the point of this team effort.
Ideally, you want to stay as nimble as possible. You can start modeling in tools like Google Sheets or Excel, but the sooner you're working directly in your content platform, the better.
Being inside the actual system helps both editors and developers quickly spot inefficiencies or limitations in your model. When choosing a platform, look for one that makes it fast and easy to model content exactly as needed. This type of shared setup fosters trust and buy-in among your content stakeholders.
That’s where Hygraph comes in. It enables real-time content modeling with a wide range of fields and data types. It also supports multi-environment setups, so your team can safely test new ideas or restructure content without disrupting production data. This makes it easy to evolve your content model over time — even mid-project.
Modeling content becomes challenging when teams attempt to strike a balance between building for a single presentation layer and creating content that is so modular it loses its meaning.
Content models should be flexible and easy to understand across the team of stakeholders, and they should scale easily as the project grows. Being intentional about how content is structured determines whether it will serve its purpose.
Problems often arise when teams don’t take the time to collaborate during the content modeling process. Early alignment enables teams to anticipate how a piece of content will evolve from start to finish, thereby avoiding surprises as it progresses through various stages of development.
Many exercises and approaches can support this early phase of content modeling. We will cover that in the next section.
Several key considerations should be taken into account when you start modeling your content.
It requires an initial investment of time from various stakeholders. However, the time you invest now will save much more later by avoiding pitfalls from missed stakeholder input.
List the foundational questions
The first step is to gather members from the design team, development team, content team, and business team to discuss how the content will be presented, how users are intended to interact with it, and what the agreed-upon outcomes are for this content.
Make sure all stakeholders agree on answers to key questions like:
What is the most important information that needs to be communicated?
What other information also needs to be communicated?
How will people discover and interact with this content?
Will this information change frequently or remain the same over long periods of time?
How critical is this information to the broader messaging of the project or essential to the functionality of the application? (ie. metadata for a product's UI)
What is the goal of communicating this information to the user? What action should they take now that they have this information (ie, sign up for your product, share the information, tell people about the brand)
What is the workflow for creating new content?/Which stakeholders need to interact with the content before it can be published?
It can be a good idea to have these examples accessible in a collaboration tool, such as Miro or Google Docs, so that team members can quickly reference the discussion as they continue working on their individual tasks.
Get to know the basics
Here are the absolute essential elements you should know about content models.
Models
The content model contains the structured content that will populate your project. These models serve as the backbone for the content used across various presentation layers.
Fields
Field defines what information will appear in every type of content model. It either stores different types of content or describes how that content should be presented on the frontend.
In the cases of fields like the Richtext Editor and Markdown, they sometimes achieve a combination of these two goals. At Hygraph, we have fields that range from simple plain text to WYSIWYG, to assets, to geographical location points, to relations.
The most common types of fields are text fields and relation fields. Relation fields are one of the most essential fields because they enable content editors to maintain structured content that is both flexible and reusable where appropriate.
Relations
Content Modeling also introduces the concept of "Sortable Relations". This allows for more flexibility, giving content creators the ability to rearrange the order of their relations within a content model without requiring development or additional work on the content modeling side.
Taking the example of a burger restaurant's menu, a "burger" simply needs a relation to "cheese", "patty", "lettuce", and "bacon", for instance. Editors can merely sort, include, and exclude the order of these relations when creating "burgers", thereby defining their own variations, rather than requiring a new content model for each burger.
Creating a content model diagram
After the various stakeholders reach a consensus on the foundational questions, it is possible to create the first iteration of a content diagram. Just as it is helpful to keep a digital log of the iterations of foundational questions, the same principle applies to content modeling.
Content modeling needs feedback from the various stakeholders, particularly in the early stages. Working with tools that enable this collaboration will help modernize workflows and save your team time.
To build content models, especially when working with modular, structured data, visually constructing the content models using a whiteboardor digital whiteboard tool helps conceptualize the ideal content models for your data.
Editor's Note
At Hygraph, we use Miro as a digital whiteboard to collaborate with our globally distributed team and to be able to keep a digital record of our iterations of content models.
To begin the whiteboarding exercise, it is helpful to be familiar with the various types of fields available inthe CMS and any limitations on the way data can be structured. In a highly flexible system like Hygraph, data can be modeled in an endless array of combinations depending on the type of project and the team’s capabilities.
For the exercise, models are rectangles that will house the various fields, as well as the model's title. Fields are small ovals that display the type of field and the kind of information that will be housed within it. Relations are represented by various colors of arrows that connect fields from different models.
Once these preliminary steps are completed, your team is set up to collaborate on building content models for the project.
A sample of what a content modeling exercise could result in is as follows.
After collaborating with the team to develop content modeling wireframes, these models should be replicated in the CMS. From there, the content team can review the process of creating dummy content to identify any necessary changes before working on the frontend.
This will also give the content team a chance to familiarize themselves with the concept of structured content modeling and how it appears when applied to their projects.
Breaking down a content model
After covering the essentials at a high level, a few key definitions will help us discuss content models more concretely.
As a simple example, let’s examine how a blog can be broken down into a content model.
A standard blog may seem simple, but with a bit of forethought, we can make a set of models that will serve our business needs for years. A blog should contain multiple model types:
Post: The main content for a single item in the blog
Author: A document containing information about the author of a blog post
Category: A document with information about blog categories
Asset: A document for images, videos, audio, and other multimedia content
These model types represent the primary content types, which are further categorized into various field types. If built correctly, it creates a sense of building with content LEGO blocks, rather than simply writing content.
A post is then broken down even further. Let’s cover the basics. A blog post, at its minimum, requires some standard data:
Title – String
Publish Date — Date
Body — Rich Text
For the most basic blog, that might make sense, but when we start to organize and remix this content, it becomes clear that extending it further is sensible.
Author — Reference to the Author model
Categories — Multi-select reference to Category model
Assets in Rich Text — References to Assets model
Featured Image — Reference to Assets model
This will cover many use cases for our site, but with more forethought, you can add additional information to cover additional use cases as well. You can create a set of metadata about the blog post that will work for an RSS feed, SEO, and social sharing.
The same can be done for the other models, as well. While Author and Category may at first glance need a string for a name or title, the more detailed the metadata, the more use cases they serve.
For instance, when adding Author and Category references to a blog post, we can create a bi-directional reference. This means that the Author information is available to the Post, but all posts associated with the Author or Category are available on those models. This enables our development teams to easily combine this information in a way that makes sense for our use case.
A content model is a direct representation and merging of business goals, user goals, editor needs, and developer needs. Let’s look at an example of how content modeling in action
The primary use case and user needs
Most of the time, when starting a project, we need to consider the primary use case and the user's needs. For example, let’s think about creating a streaming application for movies and TV shows. To initiate the process, we will examine the use cases and how users intend to utilize the application.
A user will want to be able to search and find content based on multiple criteria:
Show vs. Movie
Genre
Actors
Directors
Keywords
Content Rating
User rating
While browsing for content, a user will also need certain information to decide if a show is what they want to watch.
Trailer
Preview image
Description
User ratings
Data structure
The user case is important, but how will we actually build that use case? We need a solid foundation to build upon. This is where the overall data structure comes into play.
At first, a movie and a show may feel similar in their data structure. They both have all the data mentioned above. There is also a significant overlap in how users will want to search and discover. Those data pieces can remain the same; however, the structure of the media is completely different.
A movie is a one-off piece of content. If we structure the content and data around what a movie needs, an editor or developer will need to fill in gaps. Imagine having to enter all the data listed for each episode of a series. You’d have an editor revolt. A TV series has multiple seasons, and each season has multiple episodes. The show, each season, and each episode will need some combination of this information, and that information should cascade, filling in blanks as it moves up or down the hierarchy. An episode can have a specific content rating, but if it’s not filled in, an episode can inherit the content rating of the season or series.
By planning ahead and thinking through content rules, we can map out an entire user journey and create the optimal data structure with minimal manual data entry needs.
Reusability
One of the major benefits of proper content modeling is that you can reuse and integrate your content into any website or application.
If you are planning to build a sustainable content strategy and plan to integrate your content on several platforms, such as websites, native mobile apps, smart TV apps, or any future-proofed platform, you should keep your content model clean from presentational information.
While a browser may be able to interpret a specific “Page” model, a native mobile or TV app might not be able to. Keeping your model free of presentational information and only focusing on the actual attributes and relationships of the represented content itself is called semantic modeling and will help you reuse your content for a broader set of applications.
If, on the other hand, you only want to integrate your content on one specific channel, like a website, there is no harm in structuring your content closer to the component structure of your frontend. This will allow content creators to work more independently on new sites or landing pages without the need to align each time with the development team, in case they have a broad set of components to choose from.
Either path forward in reusability presents challenges, so the decision should be made early and with as much input as possible.
The top-down approach to content modeling starts with thinking about the intended outcome first, then the high-level information, and then the details that are essential to the content model.
In the case of wanting to build a category of landing pages. First, you begin with the Subject Model of the Landing page. Populate this model with information such as the title and header image. Then discuss with the team what makes the most sense for the content workflow and team for the rest of the details, such as: how do people feel about markdown vs rich text fields.
Another important consideration during this approach is what type of information will be repeatable or reusable throughout the project? Should this instead receive its own model? This will help modularize content, saving time and energy for the content team in the future.
Bottom-up approach
The bottom-up approach is essentially the opposite of the top-down approach. Instead of thinking about the content from a high-level first, in a bottom-up approach, you consider all of the details that need to be communicated throughout the project and see what is a good candidate for being repeatable or reusable information. From here, you create small modular content models that can be connected using relations.
After creating these modules, you can prioritize how you think this information is best communicated and develop the high-level structure.
One of the biggest learning curves when modeling content for a structured content approach, or with a headless CMS in general, is to remove the notion that models and projects will only be used to build different kinds of webpages.
Even if you are building a website, it can save a lot of time, in the long run, to think of content as something that can be used across the project in different ways.
Balance modular and presentation-centric content models
One key point in the creation of content models that can often be overlooked when teams are knee-deep in modeling exercises is that these content models, in most cases, are going to be used by people to create content. While it may be true that content is being fed to the CMS programmatically, throughout the content creation process, there is likely at least some human contact with modular content. This is why testing the content models is a critical step that should not be overlooked.
When content becomes too fractured into tiny modules, it can sometimes be challenging to decipher how it all fits together to form the intended output. It is essential to strike a balance between a comprehensive webpage template approach and a modular approach with your team. Providing descriptions for fields can also be a helpful tip to ensure that content is added where and how it was intended.
Working with a headless CMS to model content can require teams to reorient their traditional mindsets of content modeling, but it can also enable teams to serve content easily to previously underused presentation layers and serve as the glue between a variety of microservice systems.
Content modeling is never easy, but it’s an integral part of any project. It may seem daunting at first, with so many variables and factors to consider, but the benefits of investing time and effort in this area are numerous. By taking the time to plan and structure your content, you'll be able to ensure that your project runs smoothly and efficiently.
Frequently Asked Questions
A content model documents all content types or fields associated with an entry, and defines the relationship between those content types. With a content model, you can visualize the purpose of each piece of content enabling the organization of a website's content ecosystem. For example, a `Blog Post` is a model, with `Title`, `Description`, `Author`, and `Date` being the fields that compose the content model.
Content modeling is the process of creating a logical taxonomy structure for the content you create and distribute online. The process of assembling content types into a content model is what is referred to as the process of content modeling. A common way of modeling content is by first considering the intent of each content type and model.
Content modeling is usually a 4-step process.
1. Establishing the intent of the content by deciding what purpose it needs to solve in the short term, as well as leaving room for extensibility in the mid-to-long term when that content could serve multiple purposes.
2. Analyzing the requirements and determining what types of content would be needed.
3. Identifying the structure of what this content model should look like, and how many other content types or models need to be referenced.
4. Developing the content model with a combination of fields that fulfill the intent of that content.
Blog Authors
Jing Li
Bryan Robinson
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