Sharing the same codebase using Drupal multisite
Important
End of Support notice! Acquia has stopped support for Dev Desktop on
June 30, 2021. Acquia recommends that you transition to
Cloud IDE for a managed development environment on
Cloud Platform. For more information, see Migrating from Dev Desktop to Cloud IDE.
Acquia also provides limited integration with Lando as an open
source alternative to Cloud IDE.
Acquia Dev Desktop supports Drupal multisite whereby websites share code
(Drupal core, modules, and themes). Each website has its own database and
doesn’t share content, configuration, settings, or displayed themes. For more
information, see Multisite - Sharing the same code base on Drupal.org.
To create a new Drupal multisite:
Select an existing website in the left panel.
You will use the website’s codebase to create a new Drupal multisite
with a new site name, database, and files.
Click More, and then click New Drupal multisite.
In the Create new multisite dialog box, enter values for the following
fields:
Local site name: Enter a name for your local website. You must use
characters valid for URLs, as the local website URL will be based on this
name.
Database: Specify how to set up the database for your Drupal
website. If you’re starting from scratch, select
Create a new database. For information about other options, see
Importing a database.
New database name: Enter a name for the database you want to
create. The New database name field is visible only if you click the
Create a new database item in the Database list.
Click OK.
Working with a Drupal multisite
After you create a Drupal multisite, Acquia Dev Desktop will display a
Multisite selector in the right panel.
Use the Multisite selector to choose which website within your Drupal multisite
you want to work with. When you change websites within the Drupal
multisite, the local website URL and the name of the local database change, but
the local code URL doesn’t change. In a Drupal multisite, all the websites
share the same codebase.