By pdjohnson on

I wonder if there is a facility to build a site to a certain stage ie

  • Install common modules which are always required
  • Create access and roles settings
  • Build simple menu system eg About us, contact us, Privacy policy
  • Generally configure the site up to a point

Then save this off somehow so that you can duplicate this site and use it as a starting point as a time saving exercise when building many sites.

In this way we could generate base site templates which exist for several flavours of site e.g. Catalogue, eCommerce, Corporate Brochure.

Any ideas out there. I had been told there was a system called profiles which did this but can find little about it. Was it a summer of code project and if so how do i access the code?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x, Drupal 5.x

Comments

tdimg’s picture

tdimg commented

With drupal 5 it is possible to build your custom package and write an installer for it, more info: http://drupal.org/node/67921

Alternatively, I guess this could work for Drupal 4.7, you could also do a database backup and use that to populate your database at the beginning rather than the one that comes with Drupal 4.7.

redmonp’s picture

redmonp commented

I do this by saving a backup of the database at certain basepoints, and then manually referencing these with respect to modules.

So, step by step, I install drupal, create my first user, set up base roles and permissions, and activate/deactivate the drupal modules, then save the database backup as 'base'.

I add, say, views module, configure, and save as 'base_views'.

I add cck module, configure, and save as 'base_views_cck'.

I continue in this manner until I reach a point where customization on a per site level is required, and then I save backups accordingly, per site, beginning with the final base configuration for all the sites.