Sector(s)
The group sells its products to professionals in dozens of countries, through independent subsidiaries. Each subsidiary ran its own site, built separately, with no shared structure or base. Parker+Parker is building a Drupal 11 site factory from its own Drupal base. A global site in English serves as the reference. Country sites will follow in waves, on the same code. Design work is done in weekly workshops with the group's digital team. The project is in progress.
About the project
Results so far
- More than 15 blocks built for the global site, tested block by block with the client.
- A global site, then several country sites planned on a single Drupal 11 codebase.
- Personas defined with the client, which shape the site structure, user journeys and choice of blocks.
- Before acceptance testing ended, the group's digital project manager rebuilt a complete demo page in the back office on her own.
Goal
Replace independent country sites with a single platform: shared code, blocks and fixes, with enough freedom for each subsidiary to run its site.
Challenge
- Subsidiaries are independent, and their sites had been built separately, with no shared structure.
- Every change had to be redone on each site.
- The sites address different audiences, from specifiers to individual customers.
Solution
- Personas and journeys. Personas defined with the client shape the site structure, user journeys and choice of blocks.
- Drupal 11 site factory. Built on Parker+Parker's base: shared code, one configuration and one database per site. Fixes are built on the global site, then applied to country sites.
- Weekly workshops. Weekly design workshops with the group's digital team, two-week sprints and user stories approved in session.
- Block library. Shared blocks and column sections, tested block by block, with editing guides.
- Products as structured content. A dedicated content type for product pages, with no e-commerce layer.
- International workshop. A workshop with subsidiary leads prepares the rollout of country sites.
What editors do without developers
The block library, together with editing guides, lets teams build their pages without developers.
Why Drupal was chosen
The group needed a platform that headquarters could steer and subsidiaries could use on their own. Thanks to multisite, a Drupal core feature, a shared codebase serves every site, with one configuration and one database per site: a fix or a new block is built once, then deployed everywhere. Drupal's multilingual system handles country sites in one or several languages. Structured content types make it possible to model products as content, not as pages. Reusable blocks give local editors freedom within a shared design. Starting from Parker+Parker's own Drupal base, already proven on other projects, shortened the setup.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Paragraphs powers the block library shared by the global site and the future country sites. All sites share one codebase through Drupal core's multisite feature: a fix built on the global site benefits the country sites.
