Does using "Content Type Publishing" over-complicate future plans for migration and file movements

Question

I have been a SharePoint developer since SharePoint 2010, but never used "Content Type Publishing", mainly that it cause lot of issues when i try to use them, such as:-

1. Some changes on the "Content Type Publishing" such as adding new column will not get published to all lists especially when we have lot of sites and lists, leaving the content type on the "Content Type Publishing" un-synced with the content type on the list/library level. this was a regular issue in SP 2013.
2. Some sites will already have site columns or list columns with the same name as the "Content Type Publishing" columns, which can leave things unpredictable
3. Also migrating SharePoint on-premises to online was not straightforward when the on-premises were using content type publishing.

also, still most of the top-rated migration tools have lot of instructions and warnings about "Content Type Publishing" (which i do understand) such as but not limited to https://help.sharegate.com/en/articles/10236609-content-type-hub-limitations

So I always prefer to use site-scoped content types, of course we might have the same content type and site columns managed separately on different sites, but at the end we can manage this with the use of PowerShell or even manually manage those. also search service which most of the web parts reply on when retrieving content from different sites, does not care so much if we have 2 site columns with the same internal such as DocumentType, but been managed inside 2 separate site. as the 2 separate site columns will have the same crawl property and the same managed property. so for example, when we want to get documents with document Type = "Policy", this will retrieve content for the separate sites automatically.

So can anyone advice about using "Content Type Publishing" Vs site-scoped content types?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi @john john Pter，

Content types are defined for a site, and apply at that site and its subsites. But sometimes, you want to use a particular content type on multiple sites, or across site collections. For example, your organization might use a standard template for documents that requires standardized metadata. Because you want all users in the company to use this content type for documents, it is good candidate to publish across all site collections. Or, perhaps the engineering department creates a content type for design specifications, and wants to publish it to just the engineering site collections.

Because content types include metadata, content types and metadata are very closely linked. A Managed Metadata service in SharePoint makes it possible to publish a content type to the sites where it is used. Sites and site collections that are part of the Managed Metadata service are called “subscriber sites”.

A Managed Metadata service must be explicitly created and configured. To include content type publishing, the administrator specifies a specific site collection as a hub. Connected applications and site collections can subscribe to the content types on the hub. By configuring Managed Metadata services, you make it possible to centrally manage content types. Content types are created at the hub site, and any updates can be automatically distributed to the subscriber sites.

See Publish a content type from a content publishing hub for more info on publishing content types.

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