Installation

Open Intranet is a regular Drupal site, so installation is the same as for any Drupal project: get the codebase, install dependencies with Composer, point a web server at web/, run the Drupal installer with the openintranet profile.

This page focuses on the Open Intranet–specific parts of that process. For everything generic (provisioning a Linux box, configuring Nginx / Apache, securing MariaDB, setting up TLS, tuning PHP-FPM…) we link to upstream documentation rather than re-document it here.

Choose your installation path

Path	Use it for	Skills
Production on any Drupal-capable host	Real intranets, staging, on-prem	Standard Drupal hosting know-how (or a partner)
Local development with DDEV	Evaluation, demos, contributing back, custom dev	Docker + Git
Managed Drupal hosting	Zero infra ops	Provider-specific

System requirements

Open Intranet inherits Drupal’s system requirements. In short:

Component	Required
PHP	8.3+ with the standard Drupal extensions (list)
Database	MariaDB, MySQL, or PostgreSQL — pick whatever your hosting supports
Web server	Anything that can serve PHP (Nginx, Apache, Caddy, LiteSpeed…)
Composer	2.x

Sizing rule of thumb: a 200-user intranet runs comfortably on a 4 GB RAM / 2 vCPU box; 1,000+ users want Redis or Memcached caching and ideally Solr for search. For higher loads see the Drupal scaling guide.

Production install

Steps 1–4 are Open Intranet–specific. Steps 5–6 link out to the relevant Drupal / upstream docs because they are the same as for any Drupal site.

Step 1 — Get the codebase

Clone the project from drupal.org:

git clone https://git.drupalcode.org/project/openintranet.git
cd openintranet
git checkout 1.x   # or a release tag, e.g. 1.9.0

Or download a release tarball from the Open Intranet project page and unpack it.

Step 2 — Install PHP dependencies

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

This produces the vendor/ directory with Drupal core, contrib modules, and Drush.

Step 3 — Copy the starter theme into place

The repository ships a starter theme that needs to be moved into web/themes/custom/ before installation. The DDEV launch script does this automatically; for a manual install run:

cp -r starter-theme/ web/themes/custom/

Step 4 — Run the Drupal installer with the `openintranet` profile

The installer runs as it does for any Drupal site, but you select the Open Intranet profile. Two options.

Option A — Browser

Point your web server at web/, open the site in a browser, follow the steps. When asked for a profile, choose Open Intranet. The installer applies recipes and enables modules — takes a few minutes.

Option B — Drush (recommended for automation)

Install Open Intranet with drush

./vendor/bin/drush site:install openintranet \
  --db-url=mysql://USER:PASSWORD@localhost/DATABASE \
  --site-name="My Intranet" \
  --account-name=admin \
  --account-mail=admin@example.com \
  install_configure_form.enable_demo_content=1 \
  -y

Drop install_configure_form.enable_demo_content=1 for a clean install with no sample content.

You can make drush callable from anywhere

Drush is installed locally by Composer at vendor/bin/drush. To avoid prefixing every command, add a shell alias once:

echo 'alias drush="$(pwd)/vendor/bin/drush"' >> ~/.bashrc   # or ~/.zshrc

Or install the Drush Launcher globally — typing drush then auto-discovers the project-local binary in any Drupal project on your machine.

Step 5 — Apply optional recipes

Open Intranet ships several optional recipes (Room Booking, Courses, FAQ, Ideas, Inventory, Kanban, Kudos, SSO Keycloak…). Enable the ones you need at:

/admin/modules/browse/recipes

Or via Drush:

./vendor/bin/drush recipe ../recipes/openintranet_rmb

Each recipe imports its own content types, fields, views, roles and demo content. You can re-apply a recipe at any time to restore defaults.

Not covered by this guide

These steps are the same for any Drupal site and are not specific to Open Intranet. Follow the upstream documentation for your environment:

Task	Where to learn
Configure web server vhost	Sample Nginx config for Drupal, Apache config example
Create database and DB user	MariaDB, PostgreSQL docs
Set file permissions	Drupal file permissions guide
Enable HTTPS	Let’s Encrypt + Certbot
Set up cron	Configuring cron jobs in Drupal

If you have shared hosting with cPanel / Plesk / similar, all of the above is typically pre-set; you only need Steps 1–5 from the previous section, plus uploading the codebase to your hosting account and creating a database from the control panel.

Local development with DDEV

For local evaluation, demos and contributing back, DDEV is the fastest path. It ships a PHP / web server / DB stack in Docker containers tailored to Drupal.

git clone https://git.drupalcode.org/project/openintranet.git
cd openintranet
./launch-intranet.sh
ddev drush site-install openintranet install_configure_form.enable_demo_content=1 -y
ddev drush user:login

The launch-intranet.sh script handles ddev config, ddev start, composer install and the starter-theme copy. The site lives at https://<directory-name>.ddev.site.

For details on the launch script and how to contribute back, see the Open Intranet README.

Managed hosting

If you want a production install without managing a Linux stack, Open Intranet runs on any provider that supports Drupal. Common ones:

The codebase is the same — push the OI repository (or your fork) to the provider’s Git endpoint, the platform handles PHP / DB / web server / TLS / scaling.

What was installed

After the installer finishes, you have:

Component	Details
Drupal core	Latest supported major release with all required modules
Open Intranet install profile	Curated module + recipe stack for intranets
Front-end theme	Open Intranet Theme (Bootstrap Barrio subtheme)
Admin theme	Gin with the Gin Toolbar
Content types	News, Events, Knowledge Base, Pages, Webforms, Books
Document management	Folder-based document library with upload and search
Employee directory	User profiles with department, position, contact info, org chart
Knowledge base	Book-structured internal documentation
Search	Full-text search powered by Search API
Social features	Comments, reactions, kudos, bookmarks, must-read flags
AI integration	CKEditor AI assistant for content creation
Engagement Analytics	RFV scoring, segments, drush commands, dashboards

For the full list of modules pre-shipped, see the composer.json on drupal.org.

Next steps

Configuration — site name, email, optional recipes, SSO setup
User Guide — how end users interact with the intranet
REST API — JSON:API integration with external systems
Drupal docs — for everything Drupal-side that is not Open Intranet–specific