Skip to Content
 

Multi-site Drupal Installations

If you need more than one website, it's useful to know that Drupal can be deployed not only as a standalone site but also as a collection of sites when various multi-site features are applied. A multi-site deployment is when the same code is used among multiple, different sites. Each site can conveniently have its own database and settings which are found in subdirectories of the main Drupal install. Each site can also be configured with its own modules and themes.

The multi-site features in Drupal are particularly useful for managing the code since each upgrade only needs to be done once. Each site, with its own database and its own configuration settings, can have its own content, settings, enabled modules, and enabled theme.

Drupal's multi-site deployment options can be summarized as follows:

  • A Single Drupal Site with Community Modules: This technique brings together data from all sites involved into a single set of database tables. Security policies, content, navigation, and user information are managed by the community modules. This approach results in a single Drupal site with centralized source code and a consolidated database with separate content spaces created using group-based modules provided by the Drupal community.
  • Install Individual Drupal source code per sub-site: This technique duplicates the Drupal source code and database for each department site. The result duplicates Drupal source code, modules, media, and database for every sub-site.
  • Single Drupal Source code per sub-site: This technique provides multiple sites using a single Drupal source code tree. Each sub-site has separate database tables shared within a single database.

Although most of the time you will probably want to host all sites on a different domain name, you sometimes might want to run the sites in a subdirectory on one domain. You also may want to do this to run a development server for a multi-site or, like Portland State University, where all the sub-sites live under the roof of your main site.

There is obviously more than one way to deploy a collection of sites. As you explore the variety of options, keep in mind that each way does present its own set of benefits and drawbacks.If you would like to learn more about the pros and cons of each approach, please visit our blog on “Multi-site vs. Multiple Site” Drupal installs or Contact Swipht  to discuss a custom multi-site strategy that will work for you.