Platform.sh, the Continuous Delivery Cloud, is up and running with one of the very first Enterprise production sites on Drupal 8, the newest, cutting-edge version of the wildly successful Open Source content management system (CMS). With the launch of a suedostschweiz.ch, Platform.sh proves its ability to fulfill the new system’s complex requirements, providing an ideal toolset to develop and manage sites built on the Drupal 8 CMS.
Platform.sh is a second-generation PaaS (Platform as a Service) that provides managed web application hosting along with the complete suite of services needed to ensure websites run without downtime and scale within minutes. Suitable for any PHP application, it simplifies and enhances development and production workflows for Drupal, Symfony and WordPress in particular.
Part of the Somedia Group, suedostschweiz.ch is the online presence of one of Switzerland’s leading regional newspapers, serving south eastern Switzerland with print, radio, television and digital content. Somedia worked together with Platform.sh partner MD Systems to create NP8, a Drupal 8 distribution (or template) for media companies. Drupal distributions bundle a range of functionalities and settings that give organizations a head start when building sites. suedostschweiz.ch is the first site to be launched on NP8.
Lukas Joos, Head of Online at the publisher said: “SO Media is excited to be at the forefront of technical evolution in both the CMS and hosting fields. We have chosen NP8 and Drupal 8 as a CMS for the long term. And with Platform.sh we have a hosting partner that provides predictability in terms of a 99.99% uptime SLA and Enterprise-level support, together with flexibility in terms of scalability and technology choices.”
Around 500,000 articles and 150,000 images have been migrated to the site, which was built by the SO Media team after training from MD Systems. The site also integrates with SO Media’s Woodwing system, allowing new articles to be published on the web at the press of a button.
A revolutionary new CMS needs revolutionary hosting
Drupal 8 beta is the latest, greatest release of the world’s most widely used enterprise web CMS. It’s fast and flexible, tapping into the concentrated innovation of one of the largest open source communities in the world. But all that innovation and power needs the right conditions to flourish. The site’s high performance, triple redundant Platform.sh Enterprise cluster in Frankfurt provides those conditions, with rock-solid availability and seamless scaling. It also leverages the Fastly CDN for blazing performance. Tools such as New Relic and Blackfire.io come as Standard with Platform.sh Enterprise - and are being used to further optimise both the NP8 distribution and Drupal 8 itself.
Miro Dietiker, CEO of MD Systems said: “Drupal 8 is still in beta, and we at MD Systems are putting great efforts into moving things forward to a full release. Platform.sh gives us the power, flexibility and toolset to test and prove projects like NP8 in the real-world, running working sites like suedostschweiz.ch. It’s another way for us to accelerate the development of Drupal 8, and bring the goal of a stable release closer”.