1. Building
a
Dynamic
Multi-­‐site
Presence
Off-­‐the-­‐shelf
Eric
Johnson
@elstudio
Cindy
McCourt
@cindymcqt
1

2. 0.
INTRODUCTIONS
How
to
succeed
in
multi-­‐site
building
without
really
coding
2

3. Eric
Johnson
• Developer,
Proprietor
of
el-­‐studio.com
• Integrator
of
AMS/CRM/
Drupal
Commerce
• Loves
writing
code.
But
do
we
really
need
to?
• “There’s
more
than
one
way
to
do
it”
3
@elstudio
http://el-­‐studio.com

4. Cindy
McCourt
• Site
builder
• Author
of
Drupal:
The
Guide
to
Planning
&
Building
Websites
• Translates
between
tech
&
less-­‐tech
folks
• Taught
the
SGIA
team
what
they
need
to
know
about
fields,
content
types,
taxonomy
4
@cindymcqt
http://idcminnovations.com/contact

5. SGIA
• Trade
association
represents
several
specialties
– Garment
decorators
– Color
graphics
– Industrial
• A
wealth
of
content
• An
AMS
tracks
people
&
memberships
– Memberships
determine
the
level
of
access
onsite
5
@SGIA_graphics
www.sgia.org

6. What
about
you?
• Need
to
address
multiple
audiences
with
one
editorial
team?
• Want
help
with
Drupal’s
more-­‐than-­‐one-­‐way-­‐to-­‐
do-­‐it?
• Multi-­‐site
• Search
• Content
targeting
6
Who
me?
by
Regina

7. 1.
GOALS
For
the
project,
and
for
the
development
team
7

8. Project
goals[...]
1. Address
SGIA's
separate
Garment
Decorators
and
Graphics
audiences
with
distinct-­‐but-­‐
related
website
designs
and
targeted
content
2. Implement
a
standard
look
and
feel
across
a
decade
worth
of
how-­‐tos
and
technical
resources
8

9. Project
goals[...]
3. Expose
all
SGIA
content
-­‐-­‐
web
pages,
spreadsheets,
Word
and
PDF
documents
-­‐-­‐
to
full-­‐text
search
4. Suggest
related
content
dynamically,
based
on
tags
and
full-­‐text
content
analysis
5. Allow
convenient
access
from
both
mobile
and
desktop
browsers
9

10. Project
goals[...]
6. Build
staff
capacity
with
Drupal
so
that
future
site
enhancements
can
benefit
from
SGIA's
in-­‐
house
graphics
and
programming
expertise
10

11. Dev
team
goals
• No
code
is
best
• Somebody
else's
code
is
better
• Write
code
as
last
resort
11

12. 2.
THEMES
Design:
Fabulous,
separate,
themes
12

13. Shared
base
theme
(sgia_base)
13

14. SGIA_garment
theme
14

15. SGIA_expo
theme
15

16. Consider:
So
how
do
we
switch
between
themes?
• Standard
Drupal
Multisite
• Great
for
separate
sites
—
with
separate
databases,
users,
content
etc.
• Domain
Access
modules[...]
16

17. Domain
Access
allows
Shared
Content…
17
See
Trellon's
Developer
blog
for
details

18. Consider:
So
how
do
we
switch
between
themes?
• Standard
Drupal
Multisite
• Domain
Access
module[...]
• But
I
don't
want
to
have
separate
users,
database
tables,
DNS
configurations,
etc.
I
just
want
to
switch
themes.
• Help
me,
big
blue
drop!
18

19. Themekey
module!
• Switches
theme
based
on
path
– Choose
Expo
theme
if
path
is
/expo/*
– Choose
Garment
theme
if
/garment/*
• Or
a
node's
taxonomy
terms
– Failing
that,
set
theme
based
directly
on
[field-­‐subsite]
– Reset
to
Base
theme
if
needed
19

20. Themekey
Rulesets[...]
20

21. Explicit
Theme
Selection
21
field_subsite,
a
list
field,
rules
the
themes

22. Pathauto
URL
alias
sets
a
page's
path
based
on
the
[field-­‐subsite]
taxonomy
vocabulary
22

23. Choose
Expo
theme
if
path
is
/expo/*
23

24. Failing
that,
set
theme
based
directly
on
[field-­‐subsite]
24

25. Reset
to
Base
theme
if
needed
25

26. 3.
CONTENT
For
each
audience,
and
for
multiple
audiences
26

27. Taxonomy
Has
Many
Jobs
• Assign
content
to
different
community
audiences
• Select
the
appropriate
theme
• Site
architecture
• Establish
content
relationships
27

28. Communities
28
Community,
a
taxonomy
vocabulary,
indicates
which
audiences
the
content
targets

29. Site
Architecture
29

30. Related
Content
Relies
on
Tags
30

31. Related
Content
via
Views
31

32. 4.
SEARCH
Adapting
search
results
to
our
audiences
32

33. Regular
search[...]
33

34. Garment
search[...]
34

35. Separate
search
boxes
for
each
theme
• Results
optimized
for
each
audience
– Regular
search[...]
– Garment
searches
only
Garment
content[...]
• Nodes
where
Community
is
Garment
• field_vocab_community_tref
contains
“Garment”
• Configuration:
an
apachesolr
search
page
with
custom
filters[...]
35

36. Configuration:
an
apachesolr
search
page
with
custom
filters[...]
36

37. Search
views
augment
featured
content[...]
37

38. Configuration:
An
apachesolr_search
view
38

39. Consider:
SearchAPI
vs
apachesolr
• SearchAPI
does
a
better
job
of
supporting
views
&
Drupally
stuff
like
entity
display
modes
—Can
talk
to
Solr,
using
the
search_api_solr
module
—It
loads
nodes
before
you
or
views
sees
them,
so
search_api_views
act
like
you'd
expect
—Because
it's
loading
nodes,
it
can
also
be
less
efficient
than
apachesolr...
39

40. Consider:
SearchAPI
vs
apachesolr
• apachesolr
is
much
closer
to
Solr
than
Drupal
– Must
know
solr
lingo
to
configure
it:
"im_field_vocab_community_tref:2"
– apachesolr_views
can
require
4+
patches
to
get
common
use
cases
working
– But
apachesolr_attachments
is
the
game
in
town
for
indexing
Word,
PDF
or
other
file
attachments
40

41. 5.
COMMERCE
Multi-­‐site
considerations
for
commerce
41

42. Commerce
Implications
• We
ran
commerce
on
a
single
domain
• SSL
can
be
an
issue
• Yes,
Either
buy
a
wildcard
SSL
certificate
• That’s
a
cert
for
*.sgia.org
• But
Apache
SSL
requires
a
separate
IP
per
SSL
domain
• Or
run
them
singly
42

43. 6.
RECAP
What
have
we
learned
today?
43

44. What
have
we
learned?
• You
can
do
lots
of
Drupal
without
writing
code
• There’s
more
than
one
way
to
do
it
• Ask:
How
can
I
empower
the
team?
• Just
because
you
can,
doesn’t
mean
you
should
44
School
by
Elizabeth
Albert

45. Questions?
Drop
us
a
line…
45
Cindy
McCourt
@cindymcqt
http://idcminnovations.com/contact
Eric
Johnson
@elstudio
http://el-­‐studio.com