Hosting Solutions for Your Drupal Website

Large enterprises today are actively managing multiple brands under one umbrella that require them to build and manage multiple websites, as well. Expanding their business means they must be fully-equipped in terms of both manpower and resources to bring in different websites with a plethora of programming languages and designs.

An effective content management system like drupal can help you in such a case. With its top-level and flexible features, you can top the market with effective multiple website management capabilities. The solution’s cost-effectiveness can help you enhance customer experiences, at lower prices while boosting ROI.

If you're also looking for Drupal hosting, you must know that a thousand results are just a click away on Google with just the keyword “Drupal Hosting”. From this long list of companies, you must be sure to pick out the right one that works for your business. The flexibility that Drupal comes with enables most hosting companies to host a Drupal site without having to promote it. In fact, the basic requirements to host Drupal is only PHP and MySQL to run, which is a fairly easy requirement to fulfill any hosting company.

What are the basic requirements for running a Drupal website?

• Disk space
  The total amount of disk space needed depends on your site. A website consists of base files for the core software, space for additional modules or themes, space for media, backups, and other files generated by and uploaded to your site. The database also uses disk space, although that is typically not in the same area (and in some cases, not even on the same server) as that used by the site files.
• PHP
  PHP 7.3 or a higher PHP 7 version. Certain PHP extensions are also required; the exact list of required PHP extensions depends on how you install the core software and which modules you are using on your site.
• Web server
  • Apache (Recommended)
    Apache is the most commonly used web server. The core software works on Apache 2.4.7 or higher hosted on UNIX/Linux, OS X, or Windows that have the Apache mod_rewrite module installed and enabled.
  • PHP Local Server
    You can temporarily run a local demo site on your computer using just PHP, without installing web server software.
  • Nginx
    
    • Nginx - a commonly used web server that focuses on performance, high concurrency, and low memory usage. The core software works on Nginx 0.7 or more hosted on UNIX/Linux, OS X, or Windows.
    • You must install and enable the ngx_http_rewrite_module.
  • Microsoft IIS
    
    • Microsoft IIS is a web server and set of feature-extension modules to couple with Microsoft Windows. The core software works with IIS 5, 6, 7, 8, or 10 if PHP is configured correctly. For IIS 7/8, you can use the Microsoft URL Rewrite module or a third-party solution for clean URLs.
  • Database
    
    • You can use one of the following databases:
    • MySQL - 5.7.8 (MariaDB 10.3.7, Percona 5.7.8) or a database software higher with an InnoDB-compatible primary storage engine
    • PostgreSQL - 10.0 or higher with the pg_trgm extension
    • SQLite - 3.26 or higher. Temporary local demo sites use SQLite, which is distributed as part of PHP and doesn’t require separate installation of database software, but make sure your version of PHP has the minimum SQLite included.
    
    

  What are the benefits for hosting websites on Drupal Managed Hosting?

  
  
  • Drupal centric server infrastructure
    Hosting a website on Drupal can provide your business with a server infrastructure that is specifically optimized for running Drupal websites in the way that they were designed to run.
  • Better performance
    It can provide you with the required tools to help Drupal run faster. This can include the ability to use caching tools such as memcache, varnish, etc.
  • Future proof
    By hosting your website on Drupal you can get better hosting support experts who understand the ins-and-outs of Drupal.
  • Preinstalled Drupal tools
    Hosting your website on Drupal managed hosting gives you the innate ability to use Drupal server CLI tools like Drush, Composer, and Git.
  • Better security and compatibility
    Your internal teams are tuned in with the Drupal community and provide security notifications, server-wide security patches, and even server upgrades to handle dependencies in upcoming Drupal versions.
  
  

  What are your hosting options?

  
  While investing capital, manpower, and time, you must make sure that you make the right choices. While a search result can overwhelm you with extensive options, you must find the best-suited option for your business. You must do your research on these hosting companies who are the pioneers in Drupal hosting and find you the right fit. Yes, they can be expensive, but they are surely worth it. They can be a huge helping hand as they are developed specifically for running Drupal websites and offer specific features just for Drupal. They provide lots of extra knowledge and features to help you better manage and deploy your Drupal websites.
  
  The three things they all these Drupal pioneers share in common are:
  
  
  • They were all founded by actual Drupal users, including one by the founder of Drupal himself.
  • They all provide Dev/Staging test environments.
  • They all do Drupal hosting slightly differently
  
  

  Acquia Cloud

  
  Founded by Dries Buytaert, the creator of Drupal itself, is the Acquia Cloud Platform. Acquia is unarguably the biggest name in Drupal. Acquia is usually what the large enterprises turn to for Drupal hosting.

• Fig. Hosting Website on Acquia Cloud
  
  Acquia Cloud is a fully managed Drupal hosting solution. It provides a plethora of robust out-of-the-box development tools to build and deploy Drupal sites designed to fit your workflow. It has built-in security and independent audits to validate compliance with global and industry security standards.
  
  

  Pantheon

  
  Pantheon allows to host WordPress along with Drupal to deliver sites with unrivaled speed, uptime, and scalability. It helps you publish content in real-time and take control of your roadmap with minimal operational overhead.
  
  
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It is an expert open-source stack configuration to ensure the best possible performance, stability, and security. It focuses on sites, not servers, and retains all the control that comes with owning your code. It helps you build best-in-class WordPress and Drupal sites on a cloud infrastructure that delivers sub-second page loads using object cache and a lightning-fast content delivery network. Pantheon runs over a million checks a day alerting you to any potential performance issues.



What if we have our own server?


If you already have AWS Cloud account you can use AWS Quick Start solution that deploys the Drupal architecture on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. The deployment uses the following list of solutions - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon Route 53.

Google Compute Engine also provides you with virtual machines that can be used to run your own Cloud-hosted applications on the same infrastructure that runs all of Google. You can pick from a variety of virtual machines types that are ideal based on your requirements and your budget.

If you have multiple Drupal websites and are looking for a custom solution for managing these websites on your own server, we at Altudo can help you build one.

Our custom hosting solution benefits you by providing:


• One-time setup with support
• Client preferred server installation
• Designed to host Drupal but can be used to host any PHP+MySql based websites
• Single or multi-site support
• Automated CI/CD
• Default DEV, TEST, STAG, PROD instances
• Git repositories for code management
• Default MySql support for Drupal but can further support any preferred database such as Oracle, MS-Sql
• Auto Drupal Core and contributed module upgrade
• A separate log server to store server access and error logs along with Drupal website activity logs to improve website performance

Our proposed high level hosting framework includes the following:



Our framework offers you a variety of site-specific services that can be enhanced and customized per your needs.



If you are looking to find the right Drupal hosting solution to improve your multiple website management, then contact us for a free workshop to assist you in your transformation process. For more information or to help us understand your need to suggest the right solution, you can get in touch with us at marketing@altudo.co