Book Image

Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration

Book Image

Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration

Overview of this book

Drupal is one of the most powerful PHP Content Management Systems there is. However, why would you install a CMS for every site you build? With just one copy of Drupal you can host several sites. Drupal has long had multi-site support, and Drupal 7's support is even better than previous versions. Drupal 7 Multi-Sites Configuration will teach you how to host several websites on a single copy of Drupal. You will learn how to create different sites, each with its own domain, content, and theme. This valuable information will help you to save time by managing modules and sharing them across several sites as well as administering your sites all in one place.This book will show you how to configure a system for multi-site, and then install several sites on one copy of Drupal, all with their own domain name and database. Learn how to install and share modules and themes, configure Apache, PHP, and MySQL for multi-site, and then manage the site. Once your site system is successfully set up, discover some of the advanced configurations possible with Drupal multi-site, as well as how to upgrade and maintain your sites.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Manual setup


When preparing our environment for setting up a Drupal multi-site, we first walked through a setup using a special Vagrant virtual machine profile. Then we looked at the manual configurations necessary for Apache and for MySQL. Specifically, we set up an Apache virtual host capable of listening for all three of our hosts (books.local, cooks.local, and looks.local). Then we created three databases in MySQL: books_local, cooks_local, and looks_local.

Note

It is best to create one database per site. Only when absolutely necessary should you install multiple Drupal sites into the same database instance. For example, if you are only allocated a single database instance for multiple sites, you can use Drupal's database prefix feature, which is documented online at http://drupal.org/documentation.

Running the custom Vagrant profile gives us not only a complete Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP stack, but also pre-configures the environment for Drupal. And since Vagrant runs its own virtual server...