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Getting Started

Create your account, set up an organization, and start planning your Drupal content architecture in under five minutes.

1. Create your account

Strata uses an invite-only sign-up model. To create an account you need one of the following:

  • An organization invitation — a team member sends you an invite from their org settings. Follow the link in the email to create your account and join the organization automatically.
  • A claimed email domain — if your organization's admin has claimed and verified your company domain (e.g. @agency.com), you can sign up directly with that email address.
  • SSO / OIDC — if your organization has configured single sign-on, signing in through your identity provider will auto-create your account and add you to the org. See the SSO documentation for details.

Head to the sign up page and create an account with your email address. You'll be signed in automatically after registration.

2. Create an organization

After signing in you'll land on the organizations dashboard. Click New organization and give it a name (e.g. your agency or team name). The URL slug is auto-generated from the name but you can customize it.

Organizations are the top-level container in Strata. All projects, team members, and settings belong to an organization. You can create and belong to multiple organizations if you work across different agencies or clients.

Every new organization starts on the Free plan, which includes 1 project, up to 3 members, and 2 project guests. See Team Collaboration for details on plan tiers and limits.

3. Create a project

Inside your organization, click New project. Give it a name and select the target Drupal version (10 or 11). The Drupal version determines which field types, widgets, formatters, and plugins are available in the registry.

The project is where you define your entire content architecture. Strata automatically provisions all the entity-type tabs (Content Types, Taxonomy Vocabularies, Media Types, and more) when you create a project.

4. Add a content type

Select Content Types from the sidebar and click Add content type. Fill in:

  • Label — the human-readable name (e.g. “Article”)
  • Machine name — auto-generated from the label, or override manually
  • Description — what this content type is for

When you save, Strata automatically creates default Form Display and View Display entries — just like Drupal does when you create a content type in the admin UI.

5. Add fields

Click on your new content type to open it, then switch to the Fields tab. Click Add field to define a new field:

  • Label — e.g. “Summary”
  • Machine name — auto-prefixed with field_ (and the bundle's field prefix if one is set)
  • Field type — select from Drupal's field type registry (Text, Entity Reference, Image, etc.)
  • Widget — select the form widget for this field (filtered to compatible widgets for the chosen field type)
  • Formatter — the display formatter for rendering field values
  • Cardinality — how many values are allowed (1, unlimited with -1, or a specific number)

Strata validates machine name uniqueness live as you type, so you'll see conflicts before saving. See the Content Architecture docs for the full set of field properties and entity types.

Reusing fields

If you need the same field on multiple content types (shared field storage), click Reuse field instead of Add field. This lets you pick a field defined on another bundle and share it, exactly like Drupal's “Re-use an existing field” feature. Reuse is tracked via a reused_from marker, never inferred from machine names.

6. Add other entity types

Use the same workflow to add Taxonomy Vocabularies, Media Types, Block Types, Paragraph Types, Views, User Roles, Menus, Text Formats, Date Formats, Image Styles, and Components (SDC). Each entity type has its own tab in the sidebar with its own set of columns and configuration options.

7. Track and commit changes

Every edit you make is automatically tracked in a shared draft changeset. When you're ready, go to the Change Log in the sidebar to review your pending changes. Click Commit to save them with a message describing what changed.

The change log shows all committed changesets with diffs, so you can review the history of your content model at any point. See Change Tracking for details on the approval workflow and review statuses.

8. Invite your team

Go to your organization settings to invite team members. Each member gets a role:

  • Owner — full control including billing, member management, and SSO configuration
  • Admin — can manage projects, templates, review/reject changesets, and rollback changes
  • Member — can create and edit entries, commit changes, manage the project registry, and export
  • Viewer — read-only access to all projects

Everyone shares the same draft, so the whole team sees changes in real time. You can also invite external collaborators as project guests with read and comment access.

9. Export your architecture

When your content model is ready, go to the Export tab. You can export as:

  • JSON manifest — a validated, structured file that describes your entire content architecture. Designed to be consumed by the companion Drush package (strata/strata-sync).
  • XLSX spreadsheet — for sharing with stakeholders who prefer a traditional spreadsheet view.

Both full and differential exports are supported. See the Manifest & Export docs for the full schema specification.

Next steps