Drupal can run multiple separate websites from a single codebase. In a Drupal multisite architecture, the individual websites share code (the Drupal core, modules, and themes), but each website has its own database so they do not share content, configuration, settings, or displayed themes.
Note
A multisite configuration can help you with global website management tasks, such as website upgrades, since you must only upgrade one codebase. Running multiple websites from the same codebase can multiply problems, such as security issues, across all your websites. For a more robust solution, consider Site Factory.
To create a Drupal multisite:
Sign in to the Cloud Platform user interface and select your application.
Create an additional database for your new website.
Create an additional domain for the new site. For more information, see Managing domains.
Drupal uses the selection rules based on the multisite aliasing
file sites/sites.php, which must be present to map multiple domains to
specific directories. Drupal loads the optional settings in this file. The
aliases in the array $sites overrides the default directory
rules. For more information about configuring this file, see default.settings.php.
Configure your aliases based on the sites/example.sites.php file.
In your local code repository, go to your [docroot]/sites/
directory, and copy the /sites/example.sites.php file to sites.php
in that directory.
Edit sites.php to include an entry for each of your websites,
mapping the website directory to the URL. For example, for a website
with the URL emea.example.com and the website directory
[docroot]/sites/europe, add the following line:
$sites['emea.example.com'] = 'europe';
For more information, see Using sites.php to specify an alternate settings.php file.
Create a new folder in /sites/ by using the database name that you
created earlier.
Copy the /sites/default/default.settings.php file to your
new website’s subdirectory, and rename it to settings.php.
In the Cloud Platform user interface, go to the Databases page, and click PHP to display the include statement (also called the require statement) for your website.
Copy the include statement to the clipboard.
Edit the settings.php file in the new website’s subdirectory,
and then paste your website’s include statement to the end of the file.
Commit the changes to the new website’s settings.php file (and,
if applicable, sites.php file) to Cloud Platform:
In the following Git commit, the -a option commits all
the changes you made to the workspace. To commit only a specific
file or directory, replace -a with the name of the folder or directory.
git commit -a -m "Added settings.php [and sites.php] for new website."
The commit command in Git only commits your changes to your local clone
of the repository. To push those changes up to your Cloud Platform website
for deployment, use the git push command to push the changes to the
appropriate branch. For example, when deploying from a branch named
master, use the following command:
git push origin master
Some Drupal distributions may have a .gitignore file as in the
following example:
# Ignore configuration files that may contain sensitive information.
sites/*/settings*.php
Delete this line if it is present, because it prevents you from committing
your website’s settings.php file. As an alternative,
use the git add -f settings.php command to force the code commit.
In your browser address bar, enter [site_URL]/install.php
(where [site_URL] is the URL of the new website), and press
Enter. Continue with the standard Drupal installation procedure.
If you run a Drupal multisite on Cloud Platform, you can add settings.php
files to as many [docroot]/sites subdirectories as you need. Any domains
for which you do not create a subdirectory fall back to the
[docroot]/sites/default/settings.php file and load the default website.
If you have a Drupal installation for a domain name (for example,
example.com) and you would like to create another website in a subdirectory
of the same domain (for example, example.com/subsite), the multisite
configuration process is somewhat different.
Ensure you have defined example.com on your Cloud Platform Domains
page. You do not need to add domains with the subdirectory appended.
Add a new database for your multisite, if you have not already done so. See Working with databases for more information.
Add a multisite subdirectory to the /sites directory, as described
in step 3 in the preceding procedure. In our example, you would name the
multisite directory something like /sites/example.com.subsite.
On the Databases page, click PHP for the Cloud Platform require
statement for the new database. On your infrastructure, copy the default
settings.php file from the /sites/default directory and add the
Cloud Platform require statement.
You may need to create a symlink in your docroot,
linking the subdirectory name up one level, to the docroot. For our example,
create the symlink by executing the following from the command line while in
the /docroot directory:
ln -s ../docroot subsite
Add and commit the symlink and your multisite directory to your code repository.
After the changes propagate to the infrastructure, you can access your website
at example.com/subsite. If you must import a database, do that as well, or
visit example.com/subsite/install.php to install a new Drupal website.
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