Overview

Vortex is a Drupal project template designed to simplify onboarding and streamline long-term project maintenance. This page provides a high-level view of the system — what it is, why it exists, and how its components work together.

Why Vortex exists

Setting up Drupal projects can be time-consuming and inconsistent:

• ⏱️ Developers lose hours or days setting up their local, continuous integration, and hosting environments
• ⚠️ Inconsistent setups cause false negatives, undermining the reliability of tools
• 🔌 Lack of understanding of third-party service inner workings slows integration and troubleshooting
• 📉 Poor onboarding documentation affects team productivity

This leads to:

• 😩 Developer frustration and burnout
• ⏳ Project delays and missed deadlines
• 💸 Increased unplanned costs and budget overruns

Vortex was created to solve these challenges by providing a complete foundation for developing and maintaining Drupal projects.

Three pillars of Vortex

📦

Template

+

📖

Documentation

+

🎛️

Installer

📦 Template

• 💧 A pre-configured Drupal project structure with module, theme, and test boilerplate
• 🧰 Pre-configured tools for code quality checks and automated testing
• 🐳 Docker-based environment for local development and cloud hosting
• ☁️ Built-in support for Acquia and Lagoon cloud hosting platforms
• 🏗️ Continuous integration using GitHub Actions or CircleCI
• 📖 Project documentation

📖 Documentation

• 🌐 Centralised documentation at https://www.vortextemplate.com
• 🗂️ Scaffolded structure for project-specific docs
• 📋 Onboarding checklist to guide team setup

🎛️ Installer

• 🛠️ Standalone Symfony Console application
• 🏗️ Applies structure and tokens during installation
• 📦 Adds boilerplate files and custom selections
• 🔌 Extensible with a flexible API for new integrations

🧱 Solid base for your projects

• 🔄 Upgradable
• 🧪 Automatically tested in different scenarios
• 🛠️ Actively maintained as a product since 2017
• 📚 Heavily documented at www.vortextemplate.com