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+---
+title: Acquia Site Factory - Introduction
+date: 2024-12-10
+author: Milovan Krivokapić
+tags: ["acquia", "acquia-site-factory", "drupal-planet"]
+---
+In today's digital landscape, managing multiple websites efficiently is a critical challenge for many organizations. 
+Enter Acquia Site Factory, a robust platform designed to streamline the creation, management, and delivery of numerous 
+sites from a single, centralized interface. Let's explore how Acquia Site Factory is transforming multisite management.
+
+## What is Acquia Site Factory?
+Acquia Site Factory is a comprehensive platform that empowers organizations to manage a portfolio of websites with ease. 
+Whether you're overseeing multiple brands, regional sites, or campaign-specific pages, Site Factory provides the tools 
+needed to maintain consistency, security, and performance across all digital properties.
+
+## Key Features and Benefits
+1. **Multisite Management**: With Acquia Site Factory, you can build, manage, and update multiple sites from one platform. 
+This capability is particularly beneficial for organizations with diverse digital needs, allowing for efficient oversight 
+and streamlined operations.
+2. **Centralized Control**: The platform offers a unified management console where you can monitor and manage all your 
+sites. This centralization simplifies governance, ensuring that all sites adhere to the same standards and policies.
+3. **Scalability and Flexibility**: Acquia Site Factory supports the creation of sites for different languages and regions, 
+making it ideal for global organizations. It also provides role-based access controls and customizable site templates to 
+facilitate rapid site creation and management.
+4. **High Availability and Security**: Acquia ensures that your sites are always up-to-date and secure with a fully 
+managed hosting environment, regular security updates, and 24/7 monitoring. This high level of reliability is crucial for 
+maintaining user trust and engagement.
+5. **Low-Code Development**: The platform includes pre-built templates and a library of components that enable teams to 
+quickly build and deploy sites without extensive coding. This low-code approach accelerates development timelines and reduces costs.
+
+## Why Choose Acquia Site Factory?
+Choosing Acquia Site Factory means opting for a solution that prioritizes efficiency, security, and scalability. 
+It's designed to help organizations deliver consistent, high-quality digital experiences across all their sites, ensuring 
+that each site meets the same high standards.
+
+
+In a world where digital presence is paramount, Acquia Site Factory stands out as a powerful tool for managing multiple 
+websites. Its comprehensive features and benefits make it an essential platform for organizations looking to streamline 
+their digital operations and deliver exceptional user experiences.
+
+## What do you need to get started?
+To get started with Acquia Site Factory, you will need:
+1. **Subscription**:  First, you'll need to purchase a subscription to Acquia Site Factory. The subscription tier you 
+choose will determine the level of support and features available to you.
+2. **Setup and Configuration**: This includes configuring the Site Factory Administrative Console, which allows you to 
+manage your sites and their configurations. If you need help, feel free to [reach out to us](https://www.merkle.com/dach/en/contact).
+3. **Training and Onboarding**: Acquia provides training and onboarding services to help your team understand how to use 
+the platform effectively. This can include tutorials, documentation, and support from Acquia's experts or via materials on their Academy.
+4. **Local setup**: We suggest using Lando, free, open-source, cross-platform local development tool built on Docker. 
+
+Some of the benefits using Lando's Acquia recipe are:
+* It allows you to create a local environment that closely mirrors your Acquia hosting environment. This ensures that 
+what you develop locally behave similarly when deployed to Acquia Cloud.
+* You can easily pull websites to your local environment and push changes back to Acquia.
+* It comes with built-in support for tools like Drush and Acquia CLI.
+
+## Getting started with Lando and Acquia Site Factory
+First, you need to install Lando on your local machine. You can download it from the [Lando website](https://lando.dev/).
+
+Then, create a `.lando.yml` file in your project's directory. This file will define your local development environment. 
+Here is an example configuration:
+```yaml
+name: my-project
+recipe: acquia
+config:
+  acli_version: latest
+  ah_application_uuid: null
+  ah_site_group: null
+  build:
+    run_scripts: true
+  cache: true
+  composer_version: '2'
+  inbox: true
+  php: '8.3'
+  xdebug: false
+```
+You can either create a file or start command `lando init` and follow the instructions on the screen. It is recommended 
+to use `lando init` as it will also populate the `ah_application_uuid`, `ah_site_group` and `php` version for you.
+
+
+{{< figure link="images/01-Lando-init-example.webp" caption="Lando init example" alt="Lando init example" >}}
+
+Acquia recipe will spin up an approximation of the Acquia stack which consists of Apache web server, MySQL database server, 
+Memcache and PHP. Lando also provides Mailhog service that catches and let's you inspect any outgoing e-mail locally.
+
+There might be a case when you don't want some advanced parts of the stack to be used in local (for example Memcache).
+Thanks to Lando's powerful configuration system, you can easily disable them; for example cache or inbox. 
+
+Simply change `.lando.yml` to:
+```yaml
+recipe: acquia
+config:
+  cache: disable
+  inbox: false
+```