Concepts¶

The terms every other page uses. The examples follow Valtora, an industrial group that runs its corporate site, its brand sites Hydrion and Torqline and Hydrion's country sites from one Drupal.

flowchart TB
  item(["Article: Valtora opens a new test center"])
  item == origin ==> valtora["Main site: Valtora<br/>www.valtora.example"]
  item -. also shown on .-> hydrion["Main site: Hydrion<br/>www.hydrion.example"]
  item -. also shown on .-> torqline["Main site: Torqline<br/>www.torqline.example"]
  hydrion --> uk["Sub-site: Hydrion UK<br/>www.hydrion.example/uk"]

Hub¶

The hub is the installation's own hostname, like hub.valtora.example. It belongs to no site. Platform administrators create and run all sites there, and editors can work on the content of their sites there.

Site¶

A site answers on a hostname, like www.hydrion.example, and has its own content, settings, languages, menus and people. A disabled site keeps its content and settings, and its hostname stops serving it to visitors until the site is enabled again.

A main site stands on its own and answers on its hostname. A sub-site belongs to a main site: it inherits from it and can be run by its people. It usually lives under the main site's hostname at a path prefix, like Hydrion UK at www.hydrion.example/uk, and then needs no DNS entry of its own; a sub-site can also answer on a hostname of its own, like a campaign site.

Site type¶

Every site is built from a site type, like Brand site for Hydrion and Torqline. The type decides:

which settings its sites offer, and their defaults;
which kinds of content can belong to its sites, and to how many sites at once;
which roles can be granted on its sites.

Site types ship as configuration, from development to production. Sites themselves are content: they are created and changed on each environment in the admin UI.

Settings¶

A site's settings are grouped in sections, like site information, appearance, languages or the sitemap. A value comes from the most specific layer that sets one:

a value in settings.php on the server;
a value for the current environment, like staging or production;
a value for the current language;
the site's own value;
the default of the site type;
the default the module ships.

A site can inherit settings from another site, a sub-site from its main site unless it names another: which settings, and whether the site may replace an inherited value, is the site type's decision. Hydrion UK takes Hydrion's slogan until it enters its own, and runs with Hydrion's theme, which it cannot change.

Content on sites¶

Content belongs to one or more sites. Exactly one of them is the content's origin site: its URL lives there, and the origin site's people edit it. The other sites show the same content: the group's press release belongs to Valtora, and Hydrion and Torqline show it as well. The API and the developer pages call the origin site the origin site, and the version it holds the canonical version; the editor's pages say the original.

On a site's hostname, content of other sites answers "not found", like the Torqline T200 servo drive page on www.hydrion.example. Users are content too: they belong to the sites they work on.

With Content overrides, a site that shows content it does not own can change it for itself: its own title, text or layout. Hydrion gives the press release the title "Hydrion pumps at the new Valtora test center": visitors of Hydrion see that version, and Valtora and Torqline keep the original.

People¶

A role granted on the platform applies on every site. A per-site role applies on one site only, on top of the platform roles. Platform administrators can hand a site to a site manager, like Mara on Hydrion, who then adds members to that site and grants them its roles, without any power over other sites.

Last updated 2026-11-02