See how top teams are launching Drupal sites without spending hours on sysadmin work. Thousands of developers and teams have actually figured this out. Read their stories here.

1. 8 AMAZING
DRUPAL LAUNCHES
STORIES FROM TOP DRUPAL AGENCIES DEVELOPERS

2. LAUNCHING WEBSITES
IS DECEPTIVELY COMPLEX
Let’s be honest, building and launching websites is hard and the status quo for
the right tools isn’t nearly good enough. What if launching Drupal sites could be less
labor, and more love? That’s why we built Pantheon. Our customers say Pantheon
completes Drupal. It’s the fastest, most efficient way to build, launch, and
manage Drupal sites.
Not only do sites built and launched on Pantheon finish on time—but they’re also
beating the clock. In this SlideShare, we share 8 launch success stories and
outline some key challenges and solutions from a developer’s perspective.
— Zack Rosen, CEO and Co-Founder of Pantheon

3. How do you design build
a mission-critical website in
2 months, start to finish?
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4. 1. Here’s how Open Me did it
Ilya Pozin hated shopping for greeting cards. So he did what any self-respecting
entrepreneur would do. He founded a greeting card company for people who
never shop for cards, partnering with Threadless to source the designs. The result
was Open Me, a web application that makes it easy to find and send the perfect
digital and physical card.
Not only did Ciplex, the agile development agency Ilya co-founded, build the core
product in less than 2 months—but they also turned down $10,000 in free
hosting credits from Amazon, opting to launch on Pantheon instead. It was
out of the box and ready to go, built for the environment they would be
launching with.
Pantheon’s dev-test-live environment made the transition to live a no-brainer.
In the end, they barely used their own team for system administration and
other setup.
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5. How do you migrate 2,000+
sites, all hosted and supported
by one institution?
8 AMAZING DRUPAL LAUNCHES
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6. 2. Arizona State University
partnered with Pantheon
to make it happen
ASU had a big, old .edu problem in the form of 2,000+ sites in an unscalable
system, with security issues and IT needs they couldn’t support. Something had
to be done to meet the evolving needs of the university. After choosing to pursue
a Drupal hosting solution, they decided to transition to Pantheon One.
One platform takes the hassle out of building, launching, and running
thousands of websites. With Pantheon, they could keep their sites patched
and secure, integrate SSL and SSO out of the box, without relying on third-party
modules, and provide cost-effective scalability. The university expects to free up
the equivalent of 3 full-time employees.
ASU put Pantheon to the test when their housing site came under more traffic
than their environment could handle. That site was switched over to Pantheon
in about 15 minutes. Pantheon’s dev-test-live workflow enabled the system to
meet temporary traffic spikes.
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7. How do you launch 17 websites
on a single distribution—
without using Multisite?
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8. 3.
2. The Forum of Regional
Associations of Grantmakers
did it with Pantheon
With 17 websites all sharing the same platform, the Forum of Regional
Associations of Grantmakers needed to transition away from a custom
CMS to something more open and flexible. They chose Drupal.
They also needed a solution like Drupal Multisite to manage it all. But their
development agency, ThinkShout, advised against it in favor of leveraging
Pantheon One.
Pantheon’s managed distribution tools enabled ThinkShout to save more than
100 hours of development time and launch 17 websites on a single distribution.
Pantheon is the only solution that allows a network of nonprofits to roll out a
shared Drupal distribution.
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9. How do you migrate 1,000,000
nodes from Drupal 5 to
Drupal 7 with zero hiccups?
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10. 4. Ask Zicasso and we bet
they’ll say Pantheon
With one million nodes, five years of data, and hundreds of daily
transactions and business processes running every day, the decision
to rebuild and migrate luxury travel website Zicasso to Drupal 7 was not
made lightly.
CEO Brian Tan knew that one misstep would hurt not only his own business,
but also the reputations of the dozens of top travel agents who rely on Zicasso
for high-end leads. To migrate this without a hitch, they needed an A-team of
developers, designers, and content strategists. They chose Hook 42 plus
Pantheon Enterprise.
By rethinking workflows, utilizing the Multidev environment, and allowing
Pantheon to handle systems admin overhead, the hiccup count was kept
to zero and the team met the launch target. Boom!
8 AMAZING DRUPAL LAUNCHES
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11. Get all 35 pages of the best practices
and advice from top Drupal developers
and agencies just like you.
DOWNLOAD EBOOK
8 AMAZING DRUPAL LAUNCHES
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12. How do you seamlessly deliver
100,000,000 pageviews
on launch day?
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13. 5. Here’s how The New Republic
did it by scaling on launch day
Is launch day too soon to scale to 100 million pageviews? The New Republic
couldn’t wait until the big day to find out. They needed their new website to scale
from day one. The development timeline was already tight. How did they pull off
a flawless launch?
Alley Interactive, the site developer behind TNR’s relaunch, delivered with three
in-house developers and the support of Pantheon. Together they overcame
3 common large-scale Drupal website challenges:
1. A non-negotiable launch date with a tight development timeline.
2. Thousands of logged-in subscribers using Drupal to comment.
3. Tons of press—in fact, the site got 100 million pageviews
in the first 24 hours.
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14. How do you manage 20+
branded sites with a
true-cloud infrastructure?
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15. 6. Scranton Gillette
Communications scaled
without any downtime
“Yeah, we can help you scale. But we’ll need to take all of your sites offline while
our engineers unmount your file system, reboot your server, and then relaunch
your sites. So... how much RAM do you think you’ll need?”
That’s how it goes with typical ‘cloud’ hosting, built on clustered server
architecture from the 90s. They serve up RAM like it’s power in the olden days,
back when every business had to build its own power station. Need more
power? Get ready to spec and install a new boiler.
Scranton Gillette Communications needed a web-scale infrastructure that
worked like a utility company. Want more power? Just turn on the lights,
and it’s there when you need it. By moving to Pantheon, SGC eliminated
downtime for 20 websites and saved 5+ hours a week on sysadmin work.
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16. How do you free a client from AWS,
IT infrastructure support, and oldfashioned-hosting-based headaches
with one 10-hour migration?
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17. 7. B.R.I.D.G.E. meets Pantheon
DOOR3 went to their client and said, “There’s this new thing called Pantheon.
It’s a web development and hosting platform. It has a lot of features you guys
would benefit from, like truncating your session tables. It will take care of your
Drupal core updates for you, too. And if you guys need to scale up because you
have a major marketing event, they can scale you in software- without any
downtime. It’s a win-win.”
A little database cleanup, 10 hours of migration and the client is no longer tied
to AWS, no longer has old-fashioned-hosting-based headaches, and is no longer
paying DOOR3 for IT infrastructure support.
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18. Can you launch hundreds
of sites with zero Drupal
know-how?
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19. 8. The Center for Digital
Archeology says, “yes we can.”
What if your people have limited technical expertise and Internet access—but
a burning desire to manage their own content? Can you make it so easy that
anyone can fill out a form, hit a button, and get a site out of the box?
The Center for Digital Archaeology decided to do just that. They’re launching not
one, but hundreds of out-of-the-box sites—with help from Pantheon One and
a custom distribution. Coming in 2014, you can fill out a simple web form and try
out Mukurtu CMS on Pantheon One in a few clicks. Pantheon makes it possible
to spin up sites in moments. It’s that simple.
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20. Design build a
mission-critical website in
2 months, start to finish?
Seamlessly delivered
100,000,000 page
views on launch day.
Transition 2,000+ sites,
all hosted and supported by
one institution.
Manage 20+
branded sites with a
true-cloud infrastructure.
Launch 17 websites
on a single distribution—
without using Multisite.
Free a client from AWS,
IT infrastructure support,
and old-fashioned-hostingbased headaches with one
10-hour migration
... THAT’S HOW!
Get all 35 pages of the best practices and advice from top
Design an open-source
Migrate 1,000,000 nodes agencies just like you.
Drupal developers and
from Drupal 5 to Drupal 7
with zero hiccups. DOWNLOAD EBOOK
platform to reach a
worldwide user base.