How to Build a Content Model Before an Enterprise Website Redesign

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A content model defines the kinds of information your website holds, the fields that describe each kind, and the relationships between them. It answers a practical question: when a fact changes, where should an editor change it, and which pages should use the new version?

That question is worth answering before a redesign produces thirty attractive templates with thirty slightly different accounts of the same product. A cleaner layout cannot resolve an ambiguous fact. It can make the ambiguity easier to publish.

This workshop starts with an intentionally wrong model, repairs it, and puts the repair through three editing tasks. You will leave with four content types, completed sample records, field definitions and tests you can adapt to your own site. The companion HarbourGraph Content Model Workshop brings the dictionary, sample records and validation script together in one package. The aim is a small model that survives ordinary work, rather than an impressive diagram nobody can use.

Our example is HarbourGraph, a fictional Toronto software company. Its product, people, evidence references, dates and capability claims are invented solely for this exercise. They describe no real product or client. The exercise is a website content model, not a system for granting software access.

Start with the question a visitor needs answered

HarbourGraph sells a workflow product called HarbourGraph Flow in Standard and Enterprise plans. Its marketing website has an Enterprise product page, an operations use-case page and a plan comparison page. Each mentions a feature called Approval history, identified throughout the exercise as F-17.

A Canadian visitor comparing plans needs a precise answer: “Can I use Approval history on Standard, or do I need Enterprise?” A visitor evaluating a US deployment has a different question. The product’s general explanation does not answer either one.

For the opening exercise, these are the approved fictional facts:

• F-17 records who approved a workflow step and when.
• F-17 is available on Enterprise in Canada.
• F-17 is not included on Standard in Canada.
• F-17 availability in the United States is unknown for both plans.

Unknown does not mean unavailable. It also does not mean coming soon, available on request or probably the same as Canada. Each of those phrases would add a claim we have not established.

The first workshop deliverable is this short list, agreed before anyone chooses fields. Ask a product representative to explain what would make each statement wrong. If the answer is “it depends on the plan,” plan belongs in the model. If the answer is “the US release has not been confirmed,” the model needs a way to preserve uncertainty.

Keep the scope small. We will not model every product, integration, translation or pricing exception. We will model enough to reveal whether the underlying structure can carry a qualified product fact without asking every editor to remember its exceptions.

Revision one: show the model that fails

Start with the spreadsheet a rushed team might actually create:

The pages reference F-17 and display a check mark whenever Available is true. Reuse appears to work: one record, three destinations, no duplicate description to maintain.

Now run the visitor’s question through it. The comparison page puts a check mark in both plan columns. The use-case page says “Available with HarbourGraph Flow” without a regional qualification. A US page could produce the same statement. The database is consistent, but the claim is wrong.

This is the first important result of the workshop. Centralizing a bad model centralizes the error. Shared content is useful only when the shared unit means the same thing everywhere it is used.

Do not fix this with a footnote editors must remember to paste beneath the component. That leaves the primary field asserting a universal fact and the surrounding prose trying to retract it. Do not add a second global checkbox called Enterprise only, either. The two fields can disagree, and neither captures the unresolved regional question.

Write the failing test in ordinary language: “When the page asks for F-17, Standard, Canada, the answer must be not included.” The first model cannot pass because it does not store Standard or Canada. That is a structural failure, not an editor’s spelling mistake.

Keep this failed sheet. It is useful evidence of why the new relationship exists. Without it, a future simplification may put the global checkbox straight back.

Separate the fact, the page and the card

Before adding more fields, separate three decisions that often get bundled together.

The fact is that Approval history records the approver and time. That explanation can be shared. The page’s job determines why a visitor should care: an operations page might introduce handovers, while a comparison page helps someone distinguish plans. Those introductions should not automatically become the same paragraph.

The card is a presentation choice. It may have an icon, border, short heading and spacing rules. Reusing its design does not require every instance to share one content record. Equally, one feature record can appear in a card, a comparison row and a text-led section without acquiring three identities.

Use a simple test when deciding what to share. If changing this statement should change every use because all uses refer to the same fact, consider a shared record. If changing it should affect only one audience’s explanation, keep it with that page. If it changes how content looks, put it in the presentation system unless editors have a deliberate reason to choose it.

For HarbourGraph, the feature explanation is shared. “Review handovers before your next shift” belongs to the operations page. Red borders, column spacing and the position of a status label belong to the component. Availability needs its own structured relationship because it depends on the product, feature, plan and region together.

Avoid making every sentence a reusable object. A model can be technically normalized and editorially exhausting. An editor should not have to open six records to fix one introductory paragraph. Create a separate record when identity, reuse, ownership, conditional meaning or lifecycle justifies the extra step.

Revision two: give the condition its own record

The revised model has four types: Product, Feature, Availability and Page.

Product identifies what is being offered. Feature explains a capability. Availability says whether a particular feature is included for one product, plan and region during a defined period. Page assembles an audience-specific narrative and references the facts it needs.

The relationship reads like a sentence: “For product P-01, feature F-17 has this availability in this plan and region.” Availability points to one Product and one Feature. Many availability records can point to the same pair, because plans, regions and effective periods differ.

A Page holds one Product reference and an ordered list of Feature references. Its view definitions say which plan and region to request. The renderer resolves the appropriate Availability record for each view. A Canadian comparison page therefore requests Enterprise/CA and Standard/CA separately. It never asks a global feature checkbox to answer both.

A view is a small configuration object on the Page in this example, not a fifth independent content type. If views later need independent ownership or reuse, that decision can change. The workshop should reveal that need rather than assuming it.

We will use exact matches. There is no hidden “all regions” fallback. When a matching approved record is missing, the resolver returns an internal missing-record error and blocks the positive claim. It must not borrow another region’s value. An explicit unknown record is different: someone has recorded and reviewed the uncertainty, and the page follows its agreed unknown-state treatment.

These are design choices for this exercise. They are not universal requirements imposed by a CMS. Your product may need contract tier, deployment method or customer segment as an additional dimension. Add a dimension only when it changes the answer and your team can maintain it.

Fill in the records before designing the editor

A diagram can hide uncertainty behind a convincing arrow. Completed records force it into view.

Product and feature

P-01 and F-17 are stable identifiers. Renaming Approval history should not break its relationships. A public URL slug may change under a separate URL-management decision; it should not be the only identity that joins records together.

F-17 also has lifecycle active and internal evidence reference SYN-F17-01. That reference points to a fictional workshop fact sheet, not a real product document. Its fact owner is the fictional Product lead role, its reviewer is the fictional Content lead role, and its reviewed date is October 10, 2026. Its next review trigger is a change to approval-event behaviour.

Availability at the opening snapshot

All four records below are approved, effective from October 1, 2026, with no end date yet. Their review metadata is complete in the sample record file.

An end date is exclusive in this exercise. A record effective from November 1 stops applying at the start of its end date, if one is set. That convention prevents two adjoining periods from both claiming the same day. The prototype uses calendar dates in UTC; a real launch needing a particular local hour should use an explicitly defined timezone and timestamp instead.

The status describes a website fact. The approval field describes whether that fact may be used in the published view. Those are separate fields. “Available, draft” is a perfectly meaningful editorial state, but it must not become an available claim on the live website.

Page records

PG-04 is a prototype test page, not a recommendation to create a live regional landing page. It exists to test unknown-state behaviour. A production team must separately decide whether a US page has a useful, supported purpose.

The operations page can discuss why approval history matters, but its status treatment must still qualify the claim. For example: “Approval history is available on Enterprise in Canada. It is not included on Standard.” Its audience-specific introduction stays on the Page; the two status statements come from their matching availability records.

Write a field dictionary an editor can use

A field name is not a definition. “Status” is particularly dangerous when one person reads it as product availability and another reads it as publishing approval.

Start with the fields that affect truth. Give each a type, requirement, definition and invalid example. The following compact dictionary covers the main decisions; the companion dictionary includes every sample field.

There are also rules across records. Two approved availability records for the same product, feature, plan and region must not overlap in time. A reference cannot point to a missing object. An approved feature requires a completed review object. A draft record can be incomplete while an editor works, but it cannot pass the publish gate until required review details are present.

Write the error an editor should see. “Two approved Standard/CA records overlap from November 1” is more helpful than “validation failed.” Show the conflicting record IDs and the dates. Validation should help the person repair the content, rather than merely preventing the Save button from working.

Keep internal review information out of public output by design. Hiding a field in the visual template does not prove it is absent from an API response. The implementation must define which fields may leave the editorial system and test that boundary. A public fact can be supported by internal evidence without publishing reviewers’ names, internal notes or document locations.

Test the relationships, including the absent ones

A relationship diagram shows what can connect. A relationship test shows what happens when it should not.

Try a Page that references F-99, which does not exist. The validation report should identify that Page and the missing Feature. Try an Availability record pointing to P-99. Reject it before it can be approved. Try Standard spelled with a trailing space or region set to Canada instead of CA. The editing interface may normalize an allowed input, but the stored contract must be unambiguous.

Next, create two approved A-02 variants covering the same date. Returning the first match is not a solution. It makes database ordering decide the website’s product claim. The resolver should stop and report a conflict.

Finally, remove A-03 temporarily. The US Enterprise view should report a missing approved availability record. Restore A-03 with status unknown and the view should display the chosen uncertainty treatment. This pair of tests proves the system can distinguish a deliberate unknown from broken data.

For the workshop, the unknown treatment is “Availability has not been confirmed for this plan and region.” A real team may decide to omit a claim and route the question to a verified contact instead. Decide that treatment explicitly. Do not turn unknown into an optimistic check mark, and do not style it so faintly that the qualification disappears on a phone.

Read the output as a customer would

Before the editing tasks, write the expected output for the opening snapshot. This gives the designer something more useful than a box labelled dynamic content.

On PG-01, the feature block reads: “Approval history. Records who approved a workflow step and when. Available on Enterprise in Canada.” Its context travels with the claim. A visitor arriving halfway down the page should not need to infer the plan from the navigation.

On PG-03, the comparison row has two explicit answers: “Standard, Canada: not included” and “Enterprise, Canada: available.” The row does not show one large check mark beside the feature name and leave the reader to guess which column it qualifies. If the table becomes stacked cards on mobile, each card retains its plan and region labels.

On PG-04, neither US plan receives a check mark. Both say availability has not been confirmed for that plan and region. This is a deliberately unexciting answer. The model is doing useful work by refusing to make the page sound more certain than its evidence.

Now remove the decorative treatment mentally. Can the answer still be understood from text alone? A red dot and a grey dot are insufficient if the reader does not know what the colours mean. Use meaningful status text. An icon can reinforce that text; it should not carry the whole claim.

Check the sentence around the component as well. The data-driven label may correctly say Standard is not included while the page introduction says “Every HarbourGraph customer can review approval history.” That contradiction lives outside the shared record. A dependency review therefore needs both automated checks of structured output and human review of nearby editorial claims.

This is also where you decide whether to show the feature explanation on every page. The comparison row may need only a concise feature name, an optional explanatory detail and the two status values. The operations page may need the full explanation. Both can reference F-17 without rendering every field. A reusable record is a source of selected facts, not an instruction to print its entire contents.

Finally, test an unsupported view, such as a region that the exercise does not define. Do not quietly interpret it as Canada. The editing interface should reject an invalid region before publication, and the delivery layer should handle an unexpected request without producing a positive claim. The exact public error experience is an implementation decision. The truth constraint is simpler: missing or invalid context must never become an invented availability answer.

Use these output examples as acceptance text, not as a promise that a particular CMS will generate them automatically. The template, resolver and release process must be built and tested to produce the agreed result.

Editor task one: change one explanation and trace every use

Now make a plausible editorial improvement. Change F-17’s explanation from “Records who approved a workflow step and when” to “Shows the approver and approval time for each completed workflow step.” This is an invented approved revision for the exercise. It does not broaden the capability into a compliance claim or a guarantee of complete audit coverage.

The editor creates a draft revision, records why it changed and sends it to the designated reviewer. The published view continues using the approved revision until the new one is approved and released. A simple prototype can model this with two snapshots rather than pretending its files implement a production workflow.

Trace F-17 through PG-01, PG-02, PG-03 and PG-04. All four reference the Feature, but their visible effects may differ. A comparison component may display only the feature name and status. Its output might not contain the explanation. It still belongs in the dependency review because an accessibility label, expanded detail or mobile treatment may use that field.

The expected result is specific: the approved explanation changes wherever that field is rendered; page introductions remain unchanged; Enterprise/CA remains available; Standard/CA remains not included; US remains unknown. Changing a description must not silently change availability.

Then separate content correctness from delivery correctness. The approved record may be right while a static build still contains the old sentence. A server cache, edge cache, search index or separately maintained download may be behind. A dependency map tells you what to inspect; it does not prove every destination has refreshed.

For each relevant route, record the approved content revision, the requested plan and region, the rendered wording and the observation time. Verify the actual delivery path visitors use, as well as the preview. If preview is current and production is old, investigate the release and cache path. Re-editing the fact to force a refresh can obscure the real problem.

Keep exports and other channels in their own delivery list if they exist. The workshop does not assume that changing the website CMS updates a sales PDF, application interface or email campaign. Those destinations need defined integrations or an explicit manual handoff.

Editor task two: add Standard later without changing today

The second task introduces a proposed change: Approval history may become available on Standard in Canada on November 1, 2026. This is another fictional scenario, not a product announcement.

Create A-05 for P-01/F-17/Standard/CA with status available, valid_from November 1 and approval draft. Leave A-02, the currently approved not_included record, unchanged while the proposal is being reviewed. On October 10, the public resolver must still return not_included for Standard/CA. A draft is not an exception the public site is allowed to discover.

Preview the proposed release as a coherent package. In that preview, A-02 ends on November 1 and A-05 begins on November 1. In the current published snapshot, A-02 still has no end date and A-05 remains excluded. This avoids editing the live interval before the replacement is approved.

Approval alone is not a scheduling engine. The implementation must specify how the paired changes are released together, how time is interpreted and what happens if release delivery fails. The sample validator checks the resulting snapshots; it does not provide transactional publication in a real CMS.

After approval and release of the pair, test October 31, November 1 and November 2. Standard/CA should resolve to not_included, available and available respectively. Enterprise/CA should remain available across all three dates. Both US views should remain unknown. Those unchanged answers are as important as the new one: they show that the update did not spread beyond its intended context.

Reject a release containing A-05 as approved while A-02 still has an open-ended period. Both would match after November 1. Also reject a release that ends A-02 on October 31 but starts A-05 on November 1, because an exclusive end date would leave October 31 uncovered.

This exercise exposes a useful question for the redesign team: can editors preview a proposed set of related changes together? If the chosen implementation cannot support that safely, simplify the release process or build an explicit staging mechanism. Do not conceal the limitation beneath a field called scheduled.

Editor task three: retire a feature without erasing its history

Retirement creates a different problem. Suppose the fictional product team retires F-17 after a later replacement. Removing the Feature record immediately would leave four Page references pointing at nothing. Leaving every page untouched would keep presenting a retired capability as a current reason to buy.

First, identify inbound references. Separate current sales pages from pages with a legitimate historical purpose. Our four active marketing views should stop promoting F-17. A dated release-history page, if the team deliberately maintains one, may still need to describe what existed at that time.

For the exercise, create a retired snapshot in which F-17 has lifecycle retired. Remove it from the current Page feature lists through an approved page revision. Preserve F-17 and its evidence in the editorial record. The validator fails if an active current Page still references the retired feature.

If historical display is required, model it explicitly. A historical page needs an as-of date and a clear historical label; it should not accidentally resolve today’s state. Our small sample does not implement that extension. Its retirement test proves that current references are cleared and the underlying record remains recoverable for editorial history.

Do not use content-model retirement as an automatic instruction to delete a public URL or change its search treatment. A feature record, a page and a URL have different lifecycles. Decisions about page usefulness belong in a content audit and editorial backlog, with URL and redirect decisions handled in the wider redesign plan.

Ask the editor to explain the difference between remove from this page, retire this feature and delete this record. If the interface presents those actions as interchangeable, the model has not yet been translated into a safe editing experience.

Try the editor’s work, not just the database

Give someone who did not design the model a short task card: “Explain whether Approval history is included on Standard in Canada, then prepare next month’s proposed change without changing today’s public answer.” Watch where they hesitate.

If they open F-17 and cannot find a plan field, they may think the model is missing something. The interface should make the Availability relationship discoverable. A helpful label might be “Where this feature is included,” followed by the plan, region and effective period. Raw record IDs alone are poor navigation for most editors.

If they duplicate F-17 to create a Standard version, ask why. Perhaps the relationship editor is too hard to find. Perhaps the product really does have materially different behaviour by plan and the shared explanation needs reconsideration. A usability test can reveal either a poor interface or a wrong boundary. Do not assume every workaround is user error.

Ask them to locate the fact owner and explain the evidence reference. Then preview both a positive claim and an unknown state on a narrow screen. A model that passes a schema check can still fail if the qualification is far below the claim or hidden inside a collapsed section.

Record actual friction: the field they misunderstood, the duplicate they created, the page they forgot to inspect. Revise labels and relationships, then rerun the same task. “Editors liked the prototype” is less useful than “the editor prepared the draft change and correctly identified that both US views remain unknown.”

The goal is not to make editors memorize the diagram. It is to make the correct task easier than an unsafe shortcut.

Translate the tested model into the platform

Only now choose the implementation details.

In WordPress, developers can register custom post types and retrieve and render their content. That provides a possible foundation for Product and Feature records. The WordPress custom post type documentation describes those mechanisms. Availability relationships, field validation, effective-date resolution and the editing interface still need deliberate implementation; the existence of a custom post type does not supply the whole model.

WordPress also uses roles and capabilities to control actions. Its roles and capabilities documentation is the relevant starting point. The organization’s review responsibilities must be mapped to tested permissions and an actual publishing process. Do not assume that adding a Reviewer label creates a multi-step approval workflow or prevents every indirect publishing route.

Contentful describes a content model as the collection of content types in a space, with reference fields linking types. Its documentation on content models and references provides a different possible implementation vocabulary. References can connect a single entry or multiple entries. The particular plan, configuration, application and frontend determine how the full editorial and delivery process works.

Neither example makes this model a ready-made entitlement system. A marketing record saying available must never be treated as authority to grant an account access to a software feature. Product access belongs in the appropriate application controls. Likewise, a CMS publication event is not proof that every rendered route, cache or build has delivered the new content.

Keep the platform decision separate from this exercise. If that decision is still open, use the B2B website platform decision guide for the broader discussion. For WordPress ownership, operating controls and architecture, continue with the enterprise WordPress guide. Here, the decision is narrower: can the selected implementation represent and test these facts without losing their conditions?

Leave the workshop with a package someone can build

The useful output is a small, inspectable package: the four-type relationship model; a complete field dictionary; the fictional sample records; the failed global-checkbox example; current, draft, released and retired snapshots; and the expected outcomes for each editor task.

Download the HarbourGraph Content Model Workshop (ZIP), including the field dictionary, fictional records and offline validation script. Its 44 checks validate the supplied synthetic examples; they do not certify a real CMS or production release.

Include the unresolved decisions as well. Who confirms a previously unknown region? Does a release need a precise local time? Which destinations use the explanation? Can the chosen publishing process release related changes together? Will historical pages exist, and how will they resolve an as-of date? An unanswered question written down is safer than a default nobody remembers choosing.

Give each open decision a responsible role and a consequence. For example: “Product lead to define evidence required to change US from unknown; until then, no positive US availability claim.” Or: “Web team to demonstrate paired publication of A-02 and A-05; until verified, the proposed Standard launch remains a preview.” These are concrete blockers, not a generic governance checklist.

The sample script accompanying this workshop checks record references, date intervals, approved-state selection and the three task outcomes. Its passing result proves those synthetic inputs satisfy those tests. It does not certify a real website, security boundary, publishing workflow or cache system. The final implementation needs the same tests against its real editing and delivery paths.

Add the package to your website project brief so that content relationships and acceptance criteria are part of the work being commissioned. Keep the broader website redesign checklist for the rest of the launch.

For an enterprise redesign, bring the model into the first template discussion. Canada Create’s Toronto web design service provides the relevant project starting point, with WordPress development as an implementation route where appropriate. The useful brief is specific: here are the facts we share, here are the conditions that change them, and here is how an editor must be able to prove the right answer reaches the right page.

A good content model earns its place by surviving those edits. Before building thirty pages, make one shared fact pass the test.