Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It is a free software package that allows you to easily organize, manage, and publish your content, with an endless variety of customization. Thousands of Drupal add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine, from personal blogs to enterprise applications.
Drupal aims to provide a slim, powerful core that can be readily extended through custom modules. High quality, elegant, documented code is a priority over roughed-in functionality. It supports established and emerging standards. To ensure excellent performance, Drupal puts a premium on low-profile coding (for example, minimizing database queries). This CMS aims for a high standard of usability for developers, administrators, and users.
You can easily install Drupal and get it hosted in the cloud using Jelastic PaaS automatic deployment of this CMS or following the steps of manual installation within an intuitive UI.
Drupal Automatic Deployment
If you don’t have a Jelastic account yet, you can automatically register and deploy the Drupal CMS by clicking the “Get It Hosted Now”. Within the opened widget, specify your email address, choose one of the Jelastic Public Cloud providers, and press Install.
Already registered users can install Drupal from the Jelastic Marketplace directly in the dashboard.
As a result, a new environment with Apache PHP application server and MySQL CE 5.7 database will be automatically created, and the latest Drupal application version installed.
The project sources can be found at our JPS collection on GitHub.
Drupal Manual Installation
In the guide below, we’ll go through the steps required to get your Drupal CMS application up and running in the cloud.
Create an Environment
1. Log into your Jelastic account and click the New Environment button at the top left corner.
2. Within the opened topology wizard, switch to the PHP tab and choose the required application server and database stacks (Apache PHP and MySQL 8, in our case).
Note: Check the Drupal installation requirements before configuring your application topology. For example, PHP 7.2 and higher is recommended.
Configure other parameters (disk limit, public IPs, regions, etc.) up to your needs and click Create.
3. After your environment creation, click the Config button for the application server.
4. In the opened configuration file manager, use the php.ini shortcut in Favorites to quickly access and edit the file. You need to adjust several PHP modules to support Drupal installation, use the search to quickly locate the required extension:
- enable extension=gd.so and zend_extension=/usr/lib64/php/modules/opcache.so modules by removing semicolons at the beginning of the line
- disable or comment the mbstring.encoding_translation = On setting
5. Do not forget to Save the changes and Restart Nodes for the Apache server to apply them.
Now, let’s create a dedicated database for your Drupal installation.
Configure Database
1. Click Open in Browser next to the database node (MySQL in our example).
2. Log in to the admin panel with the credentials from the appropriate email. Switch to the User accounts tab and click the Add user account link.
3. Within the opened form, provide User name (e.g. drupal) and Password. Tick the Create database with the same name and grant all privileges check-box and proceed with the Go button at the bottom.
Next, return to the dashboard to deploy Drupal package.
Deploy & Install Drupal
1. Go to the official Drupal web-site to get the latest version of the application package (.zip archive) or deploy it via the direct link:
https://www.drupal.org/download-latest/zip
2. To automatically resolve the required dependencies for your project, we’ll use the Composer tool (pre-installed for both Apache and NGINX PHP servers) via the Post deployment hook:
cd $WEBROOT/{project_name}
composer install
Here, replace the {project_name} in code with the context (Path) you’ve set for the project (ROOT by default).
3. Once the package is deployed, Open in Browser your application (either from the pop-up or next to the application server node).
4. The installation process is rather simple and straightforward. Within the first two steps, choose an installation language and profile (e.g. English / Standard), then an automatic verification of the requirements is performed.
Next, provide the database connection details:
- Database type — choose the appropriate database (MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite)
- Database name, Database Username, Database Password — type the credentials, you’ve used for the database creation in the Configure Database section of this guide
- Advanced Options > Host — link to your database without the protocol part (can be seen in the appropriate email)
Click Save and continue button to proceed to the automatic installation of the Drupal CMS.
5. Finalize by providing your site information (site name, email, admin login/password, etc). Click Save and continue and you will be redirected to the front page of your new site.
Drupal is a perfect choice for large enterprise projects with high traffic. It can be used to easily manage every aspect of your website, from adding content and images to updating a product catalogue, processing credit card payments, or taking online reservations right in the cloud. Get it hosted with Jelastic PaaS at one of the globally available service providers.
