Taking the pain out of managing multiple websitesFeb 25th 2016

We speak to a lot of companies that manage more than one website, often up to a dozen or more. Sometimes it’s worth consolidating a messy digital footprint and bringing the focus back to an all-encompassing central site, but sometimes there’s very good reason to have multiple sites: perhaps a company has diversified into different audience verticals, or maybe they have different divisions or departments that need an independent presence.

In these cases we often find that an organisation’s time and budget is stretched as they try to support and maintain a fragmented digital presence. If they are lucky enough to have sites on the same platform, then bug fixes and security updates may be similar, but will still need to be applied multiple times. If sites have been built on different platforms over the years, then the situation becomes increasingly complex and a raft of suppliers with different specialisms may be needed to hold it all together. 

So, what can be done in these cases? There’s often good business logic behind having multiple sites, but if they can’t be sustainably managed, what’s the solution? 

We were presented with a similar challenge when we started working with Bath and North East Somerset Council’s world-renowned Heritage Services division. They had a portfolio of five websites promoting their key heritage attractions, with the Roman Baths website as the flagship. The Roman Baths site was by far the most popular and most complex of the five, unsurprisingly since it showcases one of the most popular tourist attractions in the UK. The other sites were smaller and contained less functionality, but each served a similar purpose: to promote a heritage attraction in Bath. 

The key to developing a sustainable digital footprint was to shift the way we thought about the problem. Rather than thinking about five websites, we began to think about a single website with five different ‘facades’. Since the sites shared a lot of key functionality, we wanted to create a central code-base that would power all five sites, but still allow each to have their own individual ‘look and feel’, web address, content and functional variations. The Drupal ‘multi-site’ approach allowed us to do just that. 

We launched the five sites in quick succession, starting with the ‘master’ Roman Baths site. The subsequent sites were developed at a fraction of the cost of the first, as the functional elements were already in place and thoroughly tested. Each of the smaller sites just needed a new theme and some configuration and they were ready to launch.

Maintaining the sites has been a breeze, since module upgrades and security patches need only be done once to apply to all five sites. The client has also taken advantage of the built-in flexibility of the system to launch a sixth site. Building it into the Drupal Multi-site system means it’s been incredibly cost-effective to launch and even more-so to maintain. 

The six sites are hosted on Acquia’s market-leading enterprise cloud platform, where the costs are calculated ‘per codebase’ rather than ‘per site’, So again it’s a win-win, with the client enjoying Acquia’s unrivalled SLA and support across all six sites for a single fee. 

The Multi-site approach certainly worked for Bath and North East Somerset Council, but it has plenty of potential applications. Online publishers that deliver numerous ‘news’ sites in different verticals would perhaps benefit most, but it could equally apply in Higher Eduction, Public Sector or NGO space. Sure, there are situations where the multisite approach wouldn’t work well, like where the sites has significant functional differences, or where the requirements are likely to diversify in future, but in the right circumstances a single code-base to power multiple sites can save a lot of time, budget and frustration.

Written by: Dan McNamara, Managing Director

Microserve is a Drupal Agency based in Bristol, UK. We specialise in Drupal Development, Drupal Site Audits and Health Checks, and Drupal Support and Maintenance. Contact us for for further information.