Field note · Content Platforms · · 2 min read
Before you reuse a CMS entry, decide who can change it
Two branch pages display the same opening hours. Someone puts the hours in one reusable entry in the content management system (CMS) and links both pages to it. A few months later, the South branch stops opening on Saturdays. An editor updates the shared entry, and both pages now show the South branch's hours.
This is a fictional example, but it exposes a specific modeling decision. The text matched when the pages launched. The facts belonged to different locations and could change independently.
Reuse creates a relationship between future edits
In Contentful, a reference links one entry to another. Its documentation explains that updating a reused entry can affect every place that references it. The change appears as the published content reaches each page through its normal delivery process. That is useful when those pages should change together.
Where should opening hours live?
Shared hours entry
North page and South page both reference hours-01. Publishing a change to hours-01 affects both locations.
Hours on each Location
location-north and location-south each contain a name, address, and hours. Each page references the relevant Location. A change to South leaves North unchanged.
The second model still reuses content. If the South branch appears on a landing page and a directory page, both can refer to the same South Location entry. Its opening hours have one owner, and the pages that ought to agree can change together.
Contentful lets teams define these relationships through content types and fields. The useful design question is who maintains each fact and which displays should follow an edit. A page-shaped model and a reusable model can both be appropriate within the same site.
Walk through a change before approving the model
Give an editor a realistic request: change one branch's Saturday hours. Ask them to find the entry, identify where the change will appear, and preview the result. If they cannot tell whether another branch will change too, the model or the editing instructions need work.
This is also why identical labels do not necessarily identify one shared concept. Martin Fowler describes how different parts of an organization can use the same term with different meanings. A marketing description of a product and a fulfillment record for it may need different owners and structures.
A sparsely used optional field is not automatically wrong, and a reference chain does not become unusable at a universal number of clicks. Judge both against the work editors actually do. For the next proposed reusable entry, name its owner and write down which pages should change when it is published. That small exercise can reveal an unwanted dependency before there is content to migrate.
Written by the Moga principals.