Ever catch yourself staring at your editor? Then switching over and staring at the content types overview of your new Drupal site? Then back to the client requirements? And then doing it all over again and again while you face a decision? Drupal content types and fields vs. custom entities. That's the tough decision. The choices you make here will affect almost part of site building to come, but it's so hard to know which to choose.

On one hand, Drupal fields are getting better, faster and more flexible all the time with better integration with contributed modules like views. But at the same time the new entity API with Drupal 7 is more flexible than ever, allowing you to add fields to even your own custom entities. So which route should you go? How can you make a decision like this without second guessing yourself all the time?

Why getting it right is important

While lots of projects can go either way the downsides can make the difference between a successful web project and a maintenance or performance nightmare. Using content types and fields with a complex data model that requires lots of complex queries can hurt performance, but using custom entities when you don't need them can add a maintenance burden when it comes time to upgrade your site or make changes. So how do you make that decision?

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