I’ve recently been working on a project for one of our clients in the tourism industry, developing a multi-site install content management system (CMS) using Drupal. The client had four websites that they wanted to manage from a single CMS. They wanted each to be distinctive yet somehow tie together, and they also wanted to be able to add more web sites to this system in the future.

By using an add-on Drupal module called Domain Access, we were able to achieve just what the client wanted. We created custom Drupal themes for each site with one common style sheet (with similar top navigation) that was shared with all the sites to ensure consistency.

The reason I could focus so heavily on customising the designs and the themes for all four sites is that much of the back-end programming – the functionality that enables things like e-commerce, blogs, collaborative authoring, forums, newsletters, podcasts, photo galleries and file uploading/downloading – is already there. Drupal is built around a flexible modular framework, and this is what makes it so satisfying to work with.

What this means for our client is that they have the ability to easily edit text and images on all four websites at the click of a button. It’s as simple as navigating to that page, clicking the 'edit' button and typing in the boxes provided. And because the CMS runs on the web server, editorial teams can collaborate and update their web pages from virtually anywhere, at any time, on any machine that uses a web browser.

Working with Drupal is not only a cost-effective option for our client (using a single CMS means that only one hosting account is required for multiple websites) but it’s also a reliable and robust content management tool.

And these are just a few of the reasons why we love Drupal.