Content Hub is a cloud-based, centralized content distribution and syndication solution that provides you with the ability to share and enrich content throughout a network of content sources (including Drupal websites) with extensible, open APIs. It is a high-performance, scalable offering that connects content bi-directionally across multiple systems. It enables enterprises that operate many digital properties the ability to effectively publish, reuse, and syndicate content across a variety of content sources and publishing channels.
Content Hub 1.x is the original version. It supports the current Drupal version and 7.x. This version of Content Hub also includes support for Personalization.
Why upgrade to the latest version of Content Hub
Content Hub 2.x aims to deliver a scalable queue-based, multi-site content syndication capability as a part of the Acquia product portfolio. With Content Hub 2.x, Acquia provides a more stable and powerful architecture to support content syndication across the widest possible range of applications running the current Drupal version. This is achieved through the following technical improvements:
- Comprehensive content dependency calculation, which ensures every piece of content has everything it needs to be successfully syndicated from one site to another. This means no more scenarios of missing content or misaligned configuration between sites.
- Enforced queueing systems for both export and import, taking load off the Drupal application and better supporting bulk content operations.
- Simplified publisher and subscriber site configuration, which makes setting up new sites with Content Hub simple and easy-to-understand. Connection to new sites is done by completing a single page configuration form, and management of existing sites is done through the user interface.
- The Event Subscriber system in the current Drupal version helps to ease customer-specific customizations without modifying the base Content Hub modules.
- Filters are now stored in the Cloud and can be assigned to multiple sites (no more duplication of the same filter across every site).
The differences between Content Hub 1.x and Content Hub 2.x include (but aren’t limited to):
| Feature | Content Hub 1.x | Content Hub 2.x |
|---|---|---|
| Dependency Calculation | Content Hub 1.x syndicates only content dependencies. You must manually create configuration entities such as content types, fields, or contrib-module dependencies such as paragraphs. | Dependency Calculation is the foundation of Content Hub 2.x. Every syndicated entity goes through dependency calculation and if a content or configuration dependency does not exist on a subscribing website, the dependency is created. |
| Scale | Syndication can happen at the same moment when entities are created. This leads to inefficiencies at scale, requiring the use of queues. | Every entity is syndicated using Drupal queues. |
| Architecture | Content Hub 1.x was written for Drupal 7 originally. | Content Hub 2.x is built on a modern, plugin-based architecture. This allows easy developer modification for data tampering and modification of the syndication process without changing the base plugin. |
| Cloud Filters | Both publisher and subscriber modules allow for selecting entities to syndicate leading to confusion. | Publisher syndicates all content so subscribers can use filters to select the content to ingest. |
| Cloud Filters | Business logic for content filters is at the module level, leading to redundant data communication over the network. | Optimized API architecture using cloud filters allows for simpler and more efficient data exchange over the network. Filters are calculated in the service, which reduces the number of webhook requests within the Content Hub network. |
| Content Workflows | Content moderation only loosely supported. | Content moderation and content translation supported out of the box. |
| Customer Experience | Challenging to set up and onboard. | Simplified onboarding experience due to automatic recognition of existing clients and an interface for managing clients. |
| Cloud Filters | Uses filters at modules to qualify entities for syndication. | Uses cloud filters, which can be defined once and assigned to multiple sites, leading to less effort to manually set per subscriber. |
| Multilingual | Multilingual content support is very rigid and requires exact configuration on both Publisher and Subscriber sites. | Multilingual content supported out of the box. |
| Reporting and Insights | Little oversight of syndication status among a fleet of sites. | Syndication status reporting dashboard capabilities. |
| Client and webhook management | Client and webhook management through drush or API only. | Client and webhook management interface built into a Drupal UI. |