Decide standard Debut solution for default content

Problem/Motivation

A common need in building features is default content--nodes that are created at feature install time.

There are three main use cases for default content:

• Sample contentthat can be used for evaluation/demonstration and then disabled.
• Persistent content that will be updated in code (in features) in future.
• Placeholder content that will be edited and customized on a given site.

Ideally, a default content solution will meet all three use cases; but doing so may be challenging, and we may need to settle for different approaches in different cases.

Default content is built into the Open App Standard, with sample content being the main model in mind.

Proposed resolution

Several options exist for providing default content, including (drawing on the Open App Standard documentation):

• Manually create nodes, taxonomy, menus, etc and track their individual ids to that they can be removed later.
• Use Feeds to import/export content from included data files (see: Ideation app).
• Use Default Content to give nodes machine names and export them with Features
• Use UUID Features to export content into Features for inclusion.
• Use Node export to export content into Features for inclusion.
• Use Migrate to import content from e.g. CSV files, as is done in Commerce Kickstart.

Remaining tasks

• Present an analysis and conclusions about which of these (or other) approaches best fits Debut.
• Post a patch on the debut spec.

Related issues

• #1473398: Candidate Debut feature: Debut Contact, which uses node_export.