Core Crazy
Shaun Haber
Warner Bros. Records

What is it?
• Basically, a look into how Warner Bros.
Records uses Drupal!

Who the hell am I?

Warner Music Group

Warner Bros. Records
• Subsidiary of Warner Music Group
• Family of labels (Reprise, Sire, etc.)
• Over 100 artists
• Top-selling albums
• It’s music biz after all!

So what?

WBR Tech
• Only label with an in-house Tech team
• “Start-up” mentality
• Fast-paced, hectic, and fun!
• We use Drupal... religiously

93 Drupal Sites
1 new site every week

Launching like crazy!

How do we do it?

It’s not magic!

Give each website its
own vhost!

Drupal core and vhosts
Conf:
DocumentRoot /path/to/drupal/core
BAD

Drupal core and vhosts
Conf:
DocumentRoot /path/to/website
File System:
/path/to/website -> /path/to/drupal/core
GOOD

Why?
• Flexibility
• Maintainability
• Core Crazy!

Remember these items
• Apache’s mod_vhost_alias
• Symbolic links
• Subversion
• Drupal’s CVS
• Shell scripts

Mod_vhost_alias
• Dynamic vhosts!

It’s a
VirtualDocumentRoot

VirtualDocumentRoot /websites/%0
iamlights.com /websites/iamlights.com
ericbenet.net /websites/ericbenet.net
tour.remhq.com /websites/tour.remhq.com

Why this kicks ass!
• Don’t need to edit conf
• Don’t need to add new vhosts
• Don’t need to restart Apache!
• Seriously, this rocks

2 part domain:
VirtualDocumentRoot /websites/%0/www
iamlights.com /websites/iamlights.com/www
ericbenet.net /websites/ericbenet.net/www
tour.remhq.com (see next slide)

3 part domain:
VirtualDocumentRoot /websites/%2+/%1
www.iamlights.com /websites/iamlights.com/www
www.ericbenet.net /websites/ericbenet.net/www
tour.remhq.com /websites/remhq.com/tour

http://httpd.apache.org/
docs/2.0/mod/
mod_vhost_alias.html

Source: http://flickr.com/photos/iguanajo/109613363
Symbolic Links

ln -s /path/to/src alias

/drupal/5.10
iamlights.com
/drupal/5.11

Simply change the symlink!
/drupal/5.10
iamlights.com
/drupal/5.11

/drupal/5.10
/sites
/drupal/5.11
/sites
/drupal/shared
/sites

All cores share some stuff!
/drupal/5.10
/sites
/drupal/5.11
/sites
/drupal/shared
/sites

/drupal/shared
/sites
/lights
/sites/lights
/settings.php
/modules
/themes

/drupal/shared Dev and Prod envs!
/sites
/lights
/iamlights.com
/iamlights.wbrdev.com
/sites/lights
/settings.php
/modules
/themes

/sites/lights
/settings.php
/modules
/cck
/drupal/modules/contrib
/cck
/5.x-1.6
/5.x-1.7

/sites/lights Simply change the symlink!
/settings.php
/modules
/cck
/drupal/modules/contrib
/cck
/5.x-1.6
/5.x-1.7

/drupal/shared Safe modules in sites/all
/sites/all
/modules
/drupal/modules/contrib
/admin_menu
/5.x-2.5

It’s symlink madness!

Subversion
• /drupal5x
/cores
/sites
/modules
/contrib
/custom

Drupal CVS
• http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/

Shell Script

Questions?
• Shaun Haber
shaun.haber@wbr.com
http://srhaber.com
Twitter: @srhaber