Want to use the most awesome version of Drupal on the most awesome Drupal hosting? ;) This guide is for you!

Let's Get Started

First, head to www.acquia.com/acquia-cloud-free to set up your new site. This process takes a few minutes, but worry not; you can bide your time watching helpful tutorial videos! Once your site is provisioned, you'll be taken to the Acquia Cloud workflow page.

Upgrade PHP version (important!)

Drupal 8 requires at least PHP 5.4 in order to install, so the first order of business is switching your environments' PHP versions, which you can easily do from the Workflow page.

Click on the triangle at the right of your Dev environment block

Click on Configure

Select PHP 5.5 and click Save

and click Repeat the same steps for your all environments.

See Configuring PHP Settings for more information.

Add SSH keys

Go to Cloud > Users and keys and click Add SSH key

and click Give it a name, and paste in your public key file's contents.

Add Drupal 8 Files to Git

Click the Git URL box in the top-right corner of the Workflow page to view a pop-up with your subscription's Git information. Your Git URL should be something like: [email protected]:webchickd8test.git

box in the top-right corner of the Workflow page to view a pop-up with your subscription's Git information. Your Git URL should be something like: Clone your Git repository to your local computer following the instructions in the pop-up. This command should be something like: git clone [email protected]:webchickd8test.git d8

Download the latest release of Drupal 8 from https://drupal.org/node/3060/release?api_version%5B%5D=7234: wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-8.0-alpha12.tar.gz # Substitute latest version.

Extract it to the Git clone of your site's "docroot" folder: tar --strip-components=1 -zxvf drupal-8.0-alpha12.tar.gz -C d8/docroot

When finished, your Git repository's directory structure should look something like this:

Now, add the new files to your site's Git repo: cd d8 git add .

Finally, commit/push the changes to get the D8 files onto your dev server: git commit -m "Initial commit: Add all the D8 code files." git push origin master

Adding and configuring settings.php

You're just about ready to go! One last thing: we need to set up settings.php, specifically for Acquia Cloud's fancy-schmancy security (that's the technical term).

First, create your settings.php file from default.settings.php: cd docroot cp sites/default/default.settings.php sites/default/settings.php

Next, go to Cloud > Databases , and click the "Configure settings.php" button. It should show you some code like: if (file_exists('/var/www/site-php')) { require '/var/www/site-php/webchickd8test/webchickd8test-settings.inc'; }

, and click the "Configure settings.php" button. It should show you some code like: Copy the include code, edit settings.php and add it to the end of the file.

of the file. Finally, add and push the settings file into Git: git add sites/default/settings.php git commit -am "Adding settings.php." git push origin master

Install away

Now you're ready to Install Drupal 8 by going to http://SITENAMEdev.devcloud.acquia-sites.com/core/install.php (NOTE: you need to go directly to the install.php script; navigating to the home page instead will give you errors).

Troubleshooting Tips

Drupal 8 is still under active development. You may run into issues attempting these steps. Here is some general troubleshooting advice.