Multisite Platforms
Multisite Platforms
There are many ways to design a multisite CMS platform because there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Business goals and aspirations help shape a multisite platform design, and there are so many options from which to choose.
At Phase2, we have years of experience with Drupal multisite and various hosting provider tools such as Acquia Site Factory and Pantheon Custom Upstreams. We also have just as much experience with community-contributed modules such as Group and Domain Access to create custom single-database multisite content management systems. Even without specialized services, multisite Drupal instances can be hosted anywhere and configured to meet our clients' needs.
Some of the key benefits of any web platform are the reusability of features and configuration from a single source of authority. Sharing content and syndications is another important unified goal, and the architectural design of any platform centers around how multiple websites should share data or content. These designs, in turn, inform how meta-features for the platform will be structured, such as federated search and performance optimization.
Phase2 also emphasizes other benefits of a multisite platform, such as increased security and identity management. Even with multiple websites being managed in a CMS, having a single digital platform dramatically reduces the overall surface area for attack vectors. Drupal can easily manage users through external identity-management systems (IDMs) so that organizations can manage user accounts, roles, and permissions in a single system of record.