Phase2 - Large Drupal Multisites (GTA Case Study)

THE LEADER IN DRUPAL PLATFORM DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Building Large Multi-Site Drupal Platforms

A Case Study on Georgia.govRobert Bates

Senior Developer

What is a Drupal

platform?

WHAT IS A DRUPAL PLATFORM?

Platform technology is a term for technology that enables the creation of products and processes that support present or future development.

It can be defined as a structural or technological form from which various products can emerge without the expense of a new process/technology introduction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_technology


open


Benefits of starting with a platform•Removes typical overhead

• Finding/installing modules• Permissions• Roles

•Provides bundled functionality• Features!• Common Views• Default Contexts

•Common CMS workflows


Things to keep in mind•One size doesn’t fit all•Usually have to customize some behaviors•Not all bundled features might apply•Custom UX

What is Drupal multi-

site?

WHAT IS DRUPAL MULTI-SITE?

Multi-site allows you to share a single Drupal installation (including core code, contributed modules, and themes) among several sites.

This is particularly useful for managing the code since each upgrade only needs to be done once. Each site will have its own database and its own configuration settings, so each site will have its own content, settings, enabled modules, and enabled theme.

http://drupal.org/documentation/install/multi-site


Benefits of Drupal multi-site•One codebase

• Easy to update contrib and platform code• Easy to roll out security patches quickly• Common code == common behavior• “Single” cloud deployment, easier to scale

•Support• Common set of features/functionality• Consistent admin experience• Simplifies training for content managers


Things to keep in mind•One codebase

• More difficult to add new modules/themes per site• Greater care required in QA for new code• Dev vs production environment differences• Virtual host management

•Support• Changes affect all sites• Managing site owners’ expectations

Putting it all together on Georgia.gov!

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER!

Multisite configurationsites/sites.php Mapping dev, staging hostnames to sites

folders, other custom domain-folder mapping

sites/all Common modules, libraries for all sitessites/default Custom PHP-based routing alternative to

Apache htaccess + mod_rewritesites/xyz.com Individual site configurations (settings.php)


•Built on latest Drupal 7 release•48 contributed modules•8 custom modules•24 Features•6 themes (mixture of contrib, base, and derived)


Georgia Agency Platform•Inherits from OpenPublic

• Modules• Features• Settings

•60 contributed modules•17 custom modules•37 Features•10 themes (1 base, 9 derived)


Georgia.gov Platform•Inherits from Georgia Agency Platform• Modules• Features• Settings

•9 custom modules•12 Features•2 themes (1 base, 1 derived)

Q & ARobert Bates

[email protected]@arpieb

Phase2 - Large Drupal Multisites (GTA Case Study)

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