same field or other

Hi @rafke

Welcome to Backdrop CMS. There are different schools of thought on this topic. Some create new fields for each content type.

Many like myself have what I consider to be a more pragmatic view:

If the purpose of the field is the same then there is a strong benefit to re-use the field as it will then be much easier to create a View across multiple content types. However, if they are a different purpose, then it makes sense to create new so the field machine name can reflect the purpose.

This is often a matter of opinion, and I have given my opinion (that is shared by others, but not all in the community) with my reason for doing so.

From the "dev" point of view, keep in mind that fields have two types of settings: global settings and instance settings. Instance settings are those that apply only to a specific content type (for example whether the field is required). Global settings apply to a field in ALL content types (for example, cardinality).

Change a global setting for a field will change it in ALL content types. That should help you decide whether you want to use the same or different fields in different content types. If the global settings will be the same everywhere, then use the same field. If not, go for different fields.

When I was a "newbie" in Drupal I often inadvertently changed a global setting for a field (e.g. the cardinality number), creating a lot of issues since I didn't want to change that for every content type. This is not uncommon.