Drupal is a flexible Content Management System (CMS). One important feature that it provides is its ability to run multiple websites from one single installation of the Drupal software. This book is about that specific feature. From installation to configuration, then to maintenance and updating, this book focuses on the nuances of what is called "multi-site" Drupal.
The book takes a practical hands-on approach, showing, by example, how to run several sites, each with its own theme, content, and users.
Chapter 1, Multi-site Drupal, introduces the broad concept of multi-site, discussing several ways that servers can be configured to run multiple sites. The first half of the chapter focuses on determining which sort of multi-site configuration is best for your needs. The second half focuses on setting up a server environment.
Chapter 2, Installing Drupal for Multi-site, covers the process of installing Drupal once, and then configuring several sites to all run on this one Drupal instance. Multi-site configuration can be tricky, but we will methodically walk through the process.
Chapter 3, Settings, Modules, and Themes, focuses on adding features to multi-sites. Sometimes features (provided by Drupal modules) are shared across sites, while other times only one of the sites will have a particular feature. We will discuss how this can be achieved. We also look at installing and configuring themes so that each site can have its own distinct look and feel.
Chapter 4, Updating Multi-site Drupal, focuses on maintenance tasks. When running multiple sites on a single installation, it can sometimes be tricky to run software updates. This chapter teaches you how to navigate the pitfalls of multi-site configurations in order to keep your site secure, safe, and stable.
Chapter 5, Advanced Multi-sites, covers several advanced topics. We will look at ways to enhance multi-site capabilities, and share limited data between sites. This survey of available add-on modules points multi-site managers to a trove of resources that can take your multi-site to the next level.
This book assumes basic knowledge of installing and running Drupal. The reader should be comfortable working in a web browser and also have a rudimentary understanding of working from the command line. While this book uses examples from Linux and Mac operating systems, the concepts apply equally well to Windows environments.
Advanced readers will also have the option to work with VirtualBox and Vagrant to quickly experiment with multi-site on its own virtual server running within your normal desktop environment.
This book is written with the site builder in mind. Those comfortable with running websites and familiar with Drupal will find this book useful. Optional advanced topics will provide experienced site builders with additional tools to broaden their Drupal and web administration knowledge.
As most Drupal installations run on Linux-like operating systems, the examples herein target that environment. However, Windows users will also be able to run the same installation on Windows.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "And thirdly, the vagrant up command tells vagrant to install, boot, and configure our server."
A block of code is set as follows:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot /var/www/ # Lots more below.
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ cd sites/books.local
$ mkdir files
$ chown www-data files
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "You can carry out this same step in your web browser by going to http://drupal.org and going to the Download and Extend page".
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