Configuration Management

In Drupal, content is defined as "Information meant to be displayed on your site, and edited by users: article, basic page, images, files, etc.". Configuration, on the other hand, is defined as "Information about your site that is not content and changes infrequently, such as the name of your site, the content types and views you have defined, etc.". A simple analogy is that of a contractor building a house. They must raises walls, set windows, and lay floors.

I was working on a new Drupal 8 site and had a new geolocation view setup to show locations on a Google map. Everything was working well, then I decided I wanted to add a new field to the node and include that field in the view. After adding the field to the view, I decided against using it and deleted the field from the node (before removing it from the view). This, in turn, deleted the entire view, which cost me a days worth of work!