Drupal site factory
Drupal site factory: one shared core, dozens of autonomous sites.
Create, deploy and govern a whole fleet of sites from a single platform: brands, subsidiaries, countries, events. Classic Drupal factory or decoupled content hub with one frontend per territory: the architecture is chosen during scoping, based on your present and future needs.
Who it is for
Several sites, one problem: making them live together.
You have several sites to roll out and want to industrialise their production. You already run a fleet and want to streamline its maintenance. Your group has several brands or subsidiaries whose web communication is uneven, with local teams of varying size. Your company is international and its site must be adapted by language and territory, with content governance that differs from one country to the next.
A site factory answers each of these situations with the same principle: a shared technical, design and functional core, from which you create as many sites as you need, without starting from scratch or multiplying vendors. We have designed and built site factories for industrial groups such as Saint-Gobain and Fayat.
Two architectures
Two architectures, depending on your needs.
The choice depends on the autonomy expected per entity and on what the sites have in common. We make it with you during scoping, based on your fleet and on what it will have to absorb tomorrow.
The Drupal site factory
A central code repository, a full Drupal instance per site, an instantiation and deployment mechanism. The right answer when each site needs strong functional autonomy: its own content, features and teams, under shared governance.
The decoupled factory: a content hub
A central Drupal back office, one Next.js frontend per country or territory: a factory limited to the presentation layer. The right answer when sites share most of their content and differ mainly in presentation and market, with a simpler infrastructure.
The principle
One core, sites on demand.
In both cases, the factory is not a duplicated template: it is a platform that creates, updates and operates the sites of the fleet from one place.
A single code base
The core lives in a central Git repository. Each site inherits it, and can carry its own specific developments in its own space without altering it.
A site created from a form
The administrator creates a site by filling in a guided form: logo, colours, global settings, features to enable. No technical project for each new site.
Centralised orchestration
An instantiation pipeline deploys new sites and pushes core updates to the whole fleet, with a test and a production environment per site.
Features
Features built for group-level challenges.
Content sharing between sites
Content published on one site can be offered to the others: each administrator chooses what to import, with cross-site moderation. Group communication circulates, local teams stay in charge.
Federated search
Each site has its own index and can query those of the federated sites: faceted search, relevance ranking, document indexing (PDF, presentations, spreadsheets).
Single sign-on
Federated login (SSO) across all sites, connectable to the company directory, with centralised rights management.
Design, structure and features customisable per site
The group's brand guidelines apply everywhere; each site picks its logo, colours, architecture and layouts from the core's component catalogue, enables the features provided by the factory or carries its own developments, without endangering the consistency of the fleet or its updates.
Content governance that fits each entity
Not every subsidiary has the same resources. Permissions and editorial workflows follow governance profiles by entity type: autonomous editing, semi-autonomous editing, translation validation, editing centralised by group marketing.
Interaction between sites and with the IS
Links between sites, content synchronisation, connection to the group's repositories (PIM, PLM, CRM, directories) through APIs: the factory fits into your information system.
The decoupled factory
One Drupal content hub, one frontend per territory.
A single content source for every channel
Drupal 11 becomes the heart of content management: an API-first back office for all country sites and distribution channels (web, microsites, apps, intranet), with rights managed by language and entity.
One Next.js frontend per market
Each country or territory has its own frontend instance, fast, search-engine optimised and updated without touching the content engine. Deploying a new instance is a pipeline, not a project.
Adapted to each market, without forking
A new instance follows the main template or departs from it according to its market: its own home page, menu tree, list and content pages, features switched on or off, micro-features developed for a single instance when needed.
Simple infrastructure, controlled costs
Decoupling splits the roles between the back office and the public interfaces: better availability, better speed, and scaling that does not require multiplying Drupal instances.
Benefits
What a site factory changes for a group.
Shared costs
Development, maintenance and hosting are shared by all sites. Centralised management costs less than a fleet of heterogeneous sites.
Fast roll-outs
An event, product or thematic site is configured rather than developed. Time to launch is counted in days, not months.
Simpler skills management
All sites work the same way. A contributor trained on one site can work on all the others.
Consistent global communication
A shared catalogue of features and layouts guarantees a consistent image and experience across the whole fleet.
Autonomous local communication
Each entity maintains its content, chooses its presentation settings and speaks to its own audience, within the group's framework.
Multilingual and multi-territory
One site per country, market or audience, on the same core, with languages enabled site by site.
Delivery
Scoping comes before the core.
Four principles guide our recommendations: modularity, so that each part evolves independently; business needs first, ahead of technical constraints; progressiveness, to keep the ability to change course; control, to never invest at a loss nor let technical debt grow.
Scoping led by the production director
Inventory of the fleet and its ecosystem (sites, repositories, connected tools), functional, persona, UX and UI workshops, then technical scoping: site typology, expected autonomy per entity, content to share, chosen architecture. The scope of the core is decided before the first line of code.
Two-week sprints, continuous visibility
Integration, frontend and backend development, then platform engineering: the instantiation pipeline that creates and deploys each new site is delivered and tested as a feature in its own right.
Hosting chosen for the fleet
Specialised cloud platforms (Acquia, Pantheon, Upsun) provide a dashboard, one-click site deployment and an environment per site. Classic hosting remains possible, at the cost of building the orchestration: we say so during scoping.
Operations over time
Security updates, version upgrades and evolutions are done once, on the core, and propagated to the fleet. The site factory falls within the scope of our Drupal maintenance.
Frequently asked questions
The site factory, explained.
What is a Drupal site factory?
A single platform that industrialises the creation and management of several websites. A shared technical, design and functional core is pooled, then rolled out into as many sites as needed, each keeping its identity, content and access rights.
When should you set up a site factory?
As soon as you run or plan several sites that share a brand, content or features: networks and franchises, multi-brand groups, subsidiaries and divisions, country sites, recurring event sites. Below three or four sites, a well-designed multilingual single site is often enough; we say so during scoping.
What is the difference between Drupal multisite and a site factory?
Native multisite shares one code base across several databases: it is a building block, not a factory, and its maintainability decreases with the number of sites. A site factory adds site instantiation from a form, orchestration of deployments and updates, content sharing, federated search and centralised rights management.
Drupal site factory or decoupled content hub?
The classic Drupal factory creates a full Drupal instance per site: the right answer when each site needs strong functional autonomy. The content hub concentrates content in a single Drupal back office and deploys one Next.js frontend per territory: the right answer when sites share most of their content and differ mainly in presentation and market. The latter's infrastructure is simpler and cheaper.
How long does it take to launch a new site?
Once the core is in place, creating a site is configuration, not a project: brand settings, features and parameters are filled in a form, then the site is deployed by the pipeline. The remaining time is that of producing the content.
Can our existing sites join the factory?
Yes. Bringing an existing site in is a migration: its content is moved into the core's model, and its specifics are either added to the shared catalogue or carried as site-specific developments. We plan the transition so that no workstream blocks the others.
How do you reconcile group consistency and local autonomy?
Through user, rights and workflow management. The core sets the infrastructure, the structure and what is shared; locally, teams choose their presentation settings and maintain their content according to their governance profile, from autonomous to centralised editing. The group sets the frame, the entities fill the space.
Where should a site factory be hosted?
On a cloud platform specialised in CMS and site factories (Acquia, Pantheon, Upsun): centralised dashboard, one-click deployment of a new site, fleet updates from the core repository, test and production environments per site. Classic hosting remains possible but requires building the orchestration.
Who maintains the fleet?
We do, if you wish: the site factory falls within our Drupal maintenance. Security fixes and version upgrades are applied to the core and propagated to all sites, with continuous monitoring of security and performance.
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