Expanding global presence for the European Bartender School using Drupal 8

The challenge

The main challenge was to expand European Bartender School's global presence while maintaining brand consistency. Each franchise required its own website, all adhering to identical branding guidelines.

Our task was to discover a solution enabling EBS to create numerous websites from a single codebase, ensuring simple website management for each franchise.

The solution

We used Drupal's multisite feature to create a dynamic architecture that allowed effortless creation and management of multiple websites from one codebase. We fine-tuned this feature to enhance scalability and efficiency.

We also streamlined the site creation process through automation, reducing the time required to launch a new site to under 4 hours.

Asset management

We improved asset management by migrating the existing file system to a media entity in Drupal. This allowed us to better organize and reuse media assets, and it also made it easier to manage permissions and security.

We also integrated media browsers into the CKEditor, which made it easier for content editors to insert media assets into their content.

Central cookie management

We created a central cookie management system to improve user experience. This system ensures that each franchise website has a GDPR cookie consent section, but it also prevents users from having to accept the cookie policy again if they have already done so on the global website.

It makes the user experience more seamless and improves compliance with GDPR regulations.

Tailored content

To avoid creating new components for each franchise site, we reused components such as paragraphs, blocks, and content types from the parent site. This allowed us to maintain brand consistency across all sites, while also giving each franchise the flexibility to add their localized content.

Faster time-to-market

To reduce the time it took to launch a new franchise website, we created a placeholder site with some default content. This content included the basic structure of the website, as well as some placeholder text and images. This allowed us to quickly launch the website, and then the franchise could add their localized content later.

Fewer deployment costs

We implemented a Docker-based environment on AWS, which improved the performance and scalability of the websites. This also reduced the time and cost of deployment, as we could now deploy multiple websites with a single command.

Outcome

Drupal 8 has helped the European Bartender School to expand its global presence with a centralized platform that enables the easy creation and management of franchise websites in multiple languages.

It has also reduced the school's reliance on the development team by giving franchisees the ability to create and update their own websites without any coding knowledge. The use of reusable components and templates has improved the consistency of the school's branding and messaging across all of its websites.

Finally, the faster, more responsive, and secure website platform has enhanced the user experience for both students and franchisees.