Thursday, 13 June 2013

Multi Site Architectures in Drupal

There are following four design options to manage multisite in Drupal...
  1. Different Drupal installations with multiple databases
  2. Multiple sites in one Drupal installation with multiple databases
  3. Multiple sites in one Drupal installation with shared tables
  4. Multiple sites in one Drupal installation with single database

1.      Different Drupal installations with multiple databases
Multiple Drupal Installation architecture will separate completely one site from another. Most of the time this is not the best solution, especially if the sites should be integrated one with the other

2.      Multiple sites in one Drupal installation with multiple databases
A very nice feature that Drupal provides is the option to manage multiple sites within the same Drupal installation. All the sites created in Drupal should be kept inside the sites folder. The sites folder can contain as many sites as we want. Drupal redirects the user to the appropriate site based on the URL entered. If no site matches, the user is redirected to the site installed in the “default” folder. Also, we have the option to share modules and themes between all the sites, by placing them in the “all/modules” folder.


3.      Multiple sites in one Drupal installation with shared tables

Another option to manage multiple sites within the same Drupal installation with same database. All the sites created in Drupal should be kept inside the sites folder. In this architecture sites share one database. We can add prefix/post-fix to site specific tables. Tables with prefix/post-fix will not be shared by other sites.


4.      Multiple sites in one Drupal installation with single database


In this architecture single database will be shared by all sites. Sites may have different configurations.

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