Important
The Remote Administration service is incompatible with the Drupal tarball installation process. However, Remote Administration is compatible with Drupal Composer-based sites.
Composer-based installs are recommended for real applications. For more information, see BLT.
Currently, the Cloud Platform user interface method is unavailable on the Cloud Next infrastructure and should only be used for demo and trial applications on the Cloud Classic infrastructure.
To install a Drupal distribution (or Drupal core), use one of the following:
A Drupal distribution is a custom edition of Drupal, tuned and extended with custom developed and contributed modules to enable desired features. Such a distribution includes Drupal core, Drupal contributed modules, themes, libraries, and installation profiles that together provide a Drupal solution. You can install most of the popular Drupal distributions in Cloud Platform. To import a Drupal distribution to Cloud Platform, you can leverage one-click selection.
Note
When first installing the Drupal.org-provided core Drupal 9 distribution, you are asked for a database password. Do not enter a password for the database, but instead click Save and Continue.
Ensure that your development environment has the following:
Execute the following Composer commands on your local machine, with the
Drupal version adjusted from 9.0.0
based on the latest stable
version available on Drupal.org:
composer create-project --no-install drupal/recommended-project:^9.0.0 .
sed -i'.original' 's/web\//docroot\//g' composer.json && rm composer.json.original
composer require drush/drush:^10.2 drupal/mysql56 --no-update
composer update
The Composer commands will do the following:
Create a Drupal project.
Ensure the Drupal uses an Acquia compatible directory structure.
Require the MySQL 5.6 contributed module, which is temporarily necessary to run Drupal 9 on Cloud Platform environments.
Note
This is not required if you are using MySQL 5.7.
Require Drush 10.2 or later.
Create a settings.php
file and update it by following the
instructions on the Acquia require line
documentation page.
Commit and push your new project to Cloud Platform using Git.
Set your Cloud Platform environment to use PHP 7.4 or later.
If your environment has an existing database used by one of your earlier or existing Drupal websites, Acquia recommends you:
Use Drush to drop the database on your Cloud Platform environment
(replace @my.alias
with the appropriate alias for your
application and environment) as displayed in the following example:
./vendor/bin/drush @my.alias sql-drop
This ensures you have a clean database for your Drupal 9 install.
Click the link in the Cloud Platform user interface to access the URL
of the Cloud Platform environment and proceed to /core/install.php
.
Follow the prompts on your website to complete the installation process.
Clone your Acquia repository into a new folder, such as
ProjectName
, and create a branch:
git clone [email protected]:Sitename.git ProjectName
cd ProjectName
git checkout -b MyBranchName
Create composer.json
and composer.lock
files:
composer create-project --no-install drupal/recommended-project .
Important
Ensure that you include the dot at the end.
Modify the composer.json
file by replacing web
with
docroot
. Use your preferred editor or run the following command:
sed -i'.original' 's/web\//docroot\//g' composer.json
Add asset-packagist.org as another repository to provide access to supplement packages.drupal.org and provide access to additional packages:
composer config repositories.1 composer https://asset-packagist.org
Configure the location and name of the vendor directory:
composer config vendor-dir vendor
Select your preferred installation type from the following options:
source
dist
auto
composer config preferred-install dist
Add the following useful projects:
composer require drush/drush:^11.0 --no-update
composer require drupal/stage_file_proxy --no-update
composer require cweagans/composer-patches --no-update
(Optional) Add the following in the section labeled extra
in your
composer.json
file for future patches. For more information, see
Patching with Composer.
Include these lines if you need to add a patch to core or a module:
"enable-patching": true,
"patches": {
"drupal/[module_name]": {
"Note regarding the nature of the patch being applied": "https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/[patch_name].patch"
}
},
Configure Composer to continue if a patch fails:
composer config extra.composer-exit-on-patch-failure false
Add the following after the section labeled extra
in your
composer.json
file. These scripts remove .git
folders after
each update to make sure git tracks all files:
"scripts": {
"post-install-cmd": [
"find docroot vendor -name '.git' | xargs rm -rf",
"find docroot vendor -name '.github' | xargs rm -rf"
],
"post-update-cmd": [
"find docroot vendor -name '.git' | xargs rm -rf",
"find docroot vendor -name '.github' | xargs rm -rf"
]
}
To install all dependencies, run the following command:
composer install
To add your database connection, copy default.settings.php
to the settings.php
file, and modify the settings.php
file by
following the instructions on the Acquia require line page:
cp docroot/sites/default/default.settings.php docroot/sites/default/settings.php
Add the following to your settings.php
file for
configuration management:
$settings["config_sync_directory"] = $app_root . '/../config/' . basename($site_path);
Add and commit your code:
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit of new Drupal core site."
Push your changes to the Acquia repository. To create a tracking branch on the remote repository, run the following command:
git push --set-upstream origin MyBranchName
Navigate to your Cloud Platform application and switch the code to your branch on your preferred testing environment.
You can access the site page and follow the Drupal installation steps.
Important
To leverage Acquia CMS starter kits and add-ons in your Drupal distribution, use one of the methods described in Installing Acquia CMS.
Cloud IDE also offers a convenient and opinionated way to install Drupal.
To install a Drupal distribution using a Cloud IDE:
Launch your Cloud IDE. If you have not yet created a Cloud IDE, follow the instructions on Getting started with Cloud IDE.
From the IDE Get Started page, click CREATE A NEW APPLICATION.
A terminal pane pops up and prompts you to install the Acquia Drupal recommended project or the Acquia Drupal minimal project.
Select your target version by typing the number associated with your
distribution selection in the terminal prompt and press Enter. Acquia CLI takes care of automatic installation of Drupal in Cloud IDE’s
/home/ide/project
directory.
After Drupal is installed, you can start developing or push from the IDE
terminal to Cloud Platform with acli push:db
and acli push:files
. As
a best practice, your codebase remains to be managed with Git.
Important
Currently, this method is unavailable on the Cloud Next infrastructure and must only be used for demo and trial applications on the Cloud Classic infrastructure.
Sign in to the Cloud Platform user interface and select the application and environment where you want to install Drupal. You cannot install Drupal in a Production environment.
On the environment’s Overview page, click Install Drupal.
Note
If Install Drupal is disabled for use, ensure that the following required items are in place for your environment:
On the Install distribution page, locate the Drupal distribution that you want to install, and click Install. For multiple distributions, you can click Learn more to get more information about a distribution.
To install a distribution that is not listed, for example, your organization may have its own Drupal distributions, or you may want to install another distribution from drupal.org, click Install from URL. In the Install Drupal from URL dialog, enter the URL of the distribution.
Note
For Drupal 7, the URL of the distribution’s download file (must be in
.tar.gz
format). The URL of the distribution’s Drush .make
file.
In the Install Drupal from URL dialog, click Install.
Deploying a new Drupal distribution in an environment takes a few minutes.
After the installation process completes, click the environment’s website URL
to visit your Drupal website. This runs install.php
to complete the Drupal
installation. The Drupal install.php
script opens in a new browser window.
The script creates a standard Drupal database, sets up the administrator
username and password, and configures other modules and features relevant
to the Drupal distribution you chose.
To start modifying your code, make a local copy of the repository using the Git checkout
command.
To install a Drupal distribution on Cloud Platform, you can download a Cloud Platform compatible .tar
or .zip
file of the latest Drupal release and complete the following steps:
Decompress the downloaded archive into the docroot
directory of your
Acquia Git repository.
Add a settings.php
file and update it by following the instructions
on Acquia require line.
Commit and push your changes to Cloud Platform using Git.
Set your Cloud Platform environment to use PHP 7.4 or later.
If your environment has an existing database that was used by one of your Drupal websites before, Acquia recommends you to:
Use Drush to drop the database on your Cloud Platform environment
(replace @my.alias
with the appropriate alias for your application
and environment) as displayed in the following example:
./vendor/bin/drush @my.alias sql-drop
This ensures you have a clean database for your Drupal install.
Click the link in the Cloud Platform user interface to access the URL
for the Cloud Platform environment and proceed to /core/install.php
.
Follow the prompts on your website to complete the installation process.
The process to update your application from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 resembles the Drupal 8 minor version upgrade process. You can prepare your Drupal 8 website for Drupal 9 by:
Removing all deprecated code from your custom modules and themes
Upgrading to the latest stable version of core
Upgrading all contributed modules to the latest stable versions compatible with Drupal 9
Once these steps are complete, you can proceed by following the standard Drupal Core update process used during minor version updates.
For more information on how to prepare your Drupal 8 website for Drupal 9, see:
Drupal 9 + Acquia: Prepare now for the easiest upgrade in a decade!
Acquia’s tracker for the Drupal 9 deprecation status of contributed projects
For more information about using Composer to update Drupal Core, see Update Drupal code via Composer.