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Database Schema Design

Design your database schema for blogs, portfolios, e-commerce, and more using Looops CMS.

Good schema design makes your content easy to manage and your website easy to build. This guide covers common patterns.

Schema Basics

Tables & Fields

Think of tables as spreadsheets:

  • Table = A type of content (e.g., "Blog Posts")
  • Field = A column (e.g., "Title", "Date")
  • Entry = A row (e.g., one blog post)
Relationships

Tables can link to each other:

  • One-to-many: One author has many posts
  • Many-to-many: Posts can have multiple tags, tags can have multiple posts

Common Schemas

Blog

Tables needed:

TableFields
Poststitle, slug, content, excerpt, date, featured_image, author (relation), category (relation), published
Categoriesname, slug, description
Authorsname, bio, photo, twitter

Tell the AI:

"Create a blog schema with posts, categories, and authors. Posts belong to one category and one author."

Portfolio

Tables needed:

TableFields
Projectstitle, slug, description, client, date, images, link, featured
Skillsname, icon, category

Tell the AI:

"Create a portfolio schema with projects and skills. Projects should have multiple images and a link to the live site."

Team Directory

Tables needed:

TableFields
Membersname, role, department (relation), bio, photo, email, linkedin
Departmentsname, description

Tell the AI:

"Create a team directory with members and departments. Each member belongs to one department."

Product Catalog

Tables needed:

TableFields
Productsname, slug, description, price, images, category (relation), in_stock, featured
Categoriesname, slug, description, image
Reviewsproduct (relation), author, rating, comment, date

Tell the AI:

"Create a product catalog with products, categories, and reviews. Products can have multiple images and belong to one category."

Best Practices

Always Use Slugs

Add a slug field for URL-friendly identifiers:

  • "My First Blog Post" → my-first-blog-post
  • Used in URLs: /blog/my-first-blog-post

"Add a slug field to the posts table that auto-generates from the title"

Add Created/Updated Dates

Track when content was created and modified:

  • created_at: When the entry was created
  • updated_at: When it was last modified

Useful for sorting and auditing.

Use Booleans for Status

Instead of text statuses, use boolean fields:

  • published: Is this content live?
  • featured: Should this be highlighted?

Makes filtering simpler: "Show all where published is true"

Plan for Relationships

Think about how content connects:

  • Does content belong to categories?
  • Does content have authors?
  • Can items have multiple tags?

Set up relationships early—they're harder to add later.

Next Steps