contentwhat

ContentWhat is a term used to describe a framework and data model for representing content items and their interrelations across digital platforms. It emphasizes the separation of content from presentation and seeks to provide a universal language for describing content elements, their types, attributes, and metadata, enabling consistent storage, retrieval, and rendering in diverse contexts.

At its core, ContentWhat treats content as entities with unique identifiers, types, versions, locales, and metadata. Relationships such as is part of, derived from, references, and related to are captured in a graph-like structure. The model supports versioning, localization, permissioning, and extensible vocabularies, allowing organizations to tailor definitions to domains while maintaining interoperability. Implementations typically expose content through decoupled APIs, enabling headless delivery and reuse across channels.

ContentWhat is not a single formal standard but a concept used by various communities in digital publishing and content engineering. The term gained traction in discussions of cross-channel content strategy in the 2010s and 2020s, where pilots explored integrating CMS, digital asset management, and search services via a unified content layer. As with similar efforts, adoption ranges from experimental projects to production-grade systems.

Applications include content management, API-driven delivery, search and analytics, localization workflows, and content reuse across products and platforms. By modeling content independently of presentation, ContentWhat can improve consistency, provenance tracking, and multi-channel publishing.

Limitations include the effort required to design and maintain a shared ontology, potential performance costs, and risks of over-standardization that reduce flexibility. Related concepts include content management systems, metadata schemas, and graph-based data models.