How PreviousNext Built a Drupal-Based Content Hub for Multi-site News Sharing

Designed for a higher education institution, the solution centres around a main Drupal site where over 10,000 articles—migrated from Drupal 7—are authored and curated using Layout Builder. Satellite sites pull curated news article listings from the hub via a custom JSON controller, not the default JSON:API, enabling fine-grained filtering based on taxonomy terms and editorial rules. These listings are rendered using React apps embedded within Drupal blocks to maintain consistent design fidelity across sites.

The editorial workflow incorporates Workbench Access and Content Moderation to assign roles and responsibilities, with notification support via Workbench Email. Authors and publishers collaborate within defined editorial groups, enabling localised publishing while preserving central oversight. Scheduled Transitions handles timed releases, allowing precise control over article publication timing. Custom curation blocks support featured content, dynamic taxonomies, and article exclusions, empowering editors to shape content layout across both central and satellite sites.

To improve usability for downstream editors, PreviousNext extended React components to handle custom autocomplete widgets for taxonomy and entity selection. These enhancements simplified complex configuration tasks without relying on Drupal’s native autocompletes. The outcome is a scalable, editorially robust system that meets modern digital publishing demands while showcasing PreviousNext’s expertise in Drupal architecture and workflow design.