Determining The Content Types

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There are two guiding principals for deciding when to create a new content type. Firstly you should create a new content type for a group of content items that have a particular presentation requirement. The reason for this is that the EPiServer Module allows you to associate a content type topic with a page template making it easier for your content editors to correctly classify new content. The second reason for creating a new content type is to enforce particular rules about how that content is classified. You can organise your content types into a type hierarchy, again allowing the more specific type to inherit certain properties from the more general type.

Content Types For the Company Intranet

A company intranet can store many different types of content. In our example we are going to keep things extremely simple. We will use a single base type for all content stored by the intranet and call that type Document. Our only subtype of Document will be Project Document which will require that it be categorised against a project. This distinction will also allow users to search for content amongst only Project Documents. The content type hierarchy is shown in the diagram below (again in UML notation).

Content Types for the Company Intranet in UML Notation

Content Types for the Company Intranet in UML Notation