make targets, Droplets, and Aegir, oh my!

5 minute read Published: Author: Derek Laventure

We’ve done it! Over the last 6 posts, we’ve reviewed in detail all the major components of our simplified Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) setup, and we’re ready to pull it all together to spin up an Aegir3 instance.

With the pieces we have covered so far, we can run the following to get up the point of actually installing Aegir:

pipenv shell  # Activate venv
source d      # Bootstrap Drumkit
make tools    # Install Ansible and Galaxy dependencies
make infra    # Run …

Starshot: Moving Drupal Towards a Product Platform

7 minute read Published: Author: Christopher Gervais, Dan Friedman & Brian Sharpe

In the world of Drupal, the terms “product” and “framework” represent two different approaches to how the platform can be used and who it serves.

A product in the Drupal sense refers to a ready-to-use solution that allows users to build and manage websites with minimal technical knowledge. It’s about offering a polished, user-friendly experience where the focus is on enabling non-developers — such as content editors or small organizations — to easily create and maintain …

Drupal 10 on Aegir 3: A Step-by-Step Guide

5 minute read Published: Author: Dan Friedman

For those in a hurry:

  1. Start with a fresh Ubuntu 22 VM.
  2. Clone this git repository and follow the instructions in the README file.
  3. Use the Aegir 3 site migration process to move your Drupal sites to your new setup.

Happy migrating!

For more detailed information, keep reading.

At Consensus Enterprises, we’re dedicated to helping organizations transition smoothly from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 on Aegir 3. While we’re developing the future of Drupal self-hosting with Aegir5, we continue to see a …

Introducing Computed Token Field

8 minute read Published: Author: Derek Laventure

In a recent project for a federal government client, we needed to upgrade (rebuild, improve, and migrate content) an internal application from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10. One of the challenges we faced was to build reports that display a large set of data fields pulled from a complex data model.

We found that using Views alone was insufficient to meet the performance and maintenance requirements for these reports. This led us to develop Computed Token Field as a way to streamline Views configuration …

Aegir5 Stewardship: Releasing Aegir back into the wild

2 minute read Published: Author: Derek Laventure

We are pleased to announce we’ve posted the first Aegir Dispatch on Aegir5 to relaunch the community site!

As mentioned in the post, we have continued evolving our list of high-level User Stories describing the critical functionality required to plan a series of Releases. We are continuing to break down these stories into a series of Request For Comment (RFC) Release Epics. This is work in progress, but we are eager to hear any feedback you may have :)

Our goal is to understand the …

Aegir5 Roadmap Update: Planning & Estimation

3 minute read Published: Author: Derek Laventure

Back in June, we submitted a Pitch-burgh pitch to seek funding to finally get Aegir 5 fully off the ground.

Prior to that, we had been working to build a roadmap to push our prototype implementation up to feature parity and an initial release for broader community participation. In parallel to that, we’d been publishing this series of posts with the goal of culminating in a roadmap and action plan.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get selected at Pitch-burgh, and then summer vacation came, …

Building the Future of Drupal Hosting with Aegir5

4 minute read Published: Author: Derek Laventure

Consensus Enterprises is not your average technology company. We are a collective of workers who are driven by optimism, equity, and a shared passion for open-source technologies. Our mission is to build a company that doesn’t just benefit a select few, but instead shares the rewards of our collective hard work.

Having contributed to the Drupal community and others for over 20 years, open-source technology is deeply ingrained in our DNA. We maintain the widely-used Aegir hosting system, a …

Aegir5: Feature parity between Aegir3 and Aegir5

5 minute read Published: Author: Christopher Gervais

In previous posts, we’ve covered our Kubernetes framework for an alternative back-end to Aegir5, as well as the front-end Tasks and Operations and Clusters, Projects, Releases, and Environments. We also discussed the Queue architecture that ties the front- and back-ends together. This time, let’s consider the planned feature parity between Aegir 3 and Aegir 5.

In Aegir3, Servers only have a “verify” task. This ensures that the front end can connect to the server over …

Aegir5 + Pitch-burgh

5 minute read Published: Author: Derek Laventure

See our recent Aegir5 Roadmapping series for more background!

Recently, Dries announced an exciting event at the upcoming DrupalCon Pittsburgh: Shark Tank meets Drupal: pitch your best innovation ideas/):

Announcing “Pitch-burgh”, an innovation contest at DrupalCon Pittsburgh, where members of the Drupal community can pitch their ideas to receive funding. […] The entrepreneurs give short 2-3 minute presentations in the hopes of securing funding for their idea.

Since …

Aegir5: Kubernetes Backend integration

2 minute read Published: Author: Christopher Gervais

In previous posts we covered how the Frontend and queue mechanisms can talk with the Backend. We also covered the stand-alone work we’ve been doing within Drumkit to support Drupal on Kubernetes. In this post, we’ll discuss how we plan to integrate this new Backend into the existing Aegir 5 architecture.

To integrate the Kubernetes Backend into Aegir 5, we will need to build new top-level entities (see this earlier post about Clusters, Projects, Releases, and Environments) for the …