Sector(s)
The group's web presence runs on a site factory: a master site and 50 country sites, fed by the head office marketing team and by local teams. Parker+Parker rebuilt this platform on Drupal with Acquia Site Studio, a visual page builder. Country teams now assemble their pages from a shared library of more than 50 blocks, without developers. The platform was delivered in four months. Country sites followed in batches, and the former platform stayed online until the last country switched over.
About the project
Results
- A master site and 50 country sites on a single Drupal codebase.
- More than 50 Acquia Site Studio blocks that editors configure without code.
- A first version of the platform delivered in four months.
Goal
Let country teams publish without opening a development ticket, on shared brand guidelines and a shared block library. The platform also had to meet two accessibility standards: RGAA, the French standard, and WCAG.
Challenge
- Three stakeholders steer the platform: the IT department, group marketing and the countries. Their requests are frequent and sometimes conflicting.
- The former platform had to stay online and maintained until the last country switched over, so two platforms ran in parallel, each with its own tracking.
- Every block had to work in each country's languages and pass accessibility checks before deployment.
Solution
- Block library. More than 50 blocks built in Acquia Site Studio. Each one exposes its content, variants and layout options in the back office, within the limits of the brand guidelines.
- Master site. A first version of the platform was delivered in four months, before the country sites were rolled out.
- Built-in translation. Translations are requested from Drupal, into each country's languages, with no manual content export.
- Batch rollout. Country sites were delivered in waves, each one tested before going live. The former platform received its fixes in parallel, tracked separately.
- Accessibility. Brand guidelines and blocks designed with RGAA and WCAG in mind.
What editors do without developers
A country editor creates a page from existing blocks, changes its layout and submits it for publication without a developer. Translation requests also start from the back office: content never leaves Drupal to be translated.
Why Drupal was chosen
With multisite, a feature of Drupal core, a single codebase serves the master site and 50 country sites. A fix or a new block reaches every country in the same release. Drupal's multilingual system handles each country's languages, with no add-on product. Acquia Site Studio added the missing layer: a visual page builder in which marketing teams assemble their pages from approved blocks, within the brand guidelines, without writing code. Governance also weighed in the choice. The IT department, group marketing and country teams work in the same back office, with roles and approval steps that match their responsibilities.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Acquia Site Studio, distributed by Acquia, provides the visual page builder and the block library used by country teams. The 50 country sites share one codebase through Drupal core's multisite feature, so no contributed module is needed for it.
