Studio 24 WordPress Multi-Environment Config

This repository contains Studio 24's standard config setup for WordPress, which supports multiple environments such as your local development copy, a test staging site, and the live production site.

Using the multi-environment config you don't need to edit your config files between environments or update site URLs in your database, WordPress will just work!

Credit is due to FocusLabs EE Master Config who gave me the inspiration for the organisation of the config files.

How it works

The system detects what environment the current website is in and loads the relevant config file for that environment.

A default config file is loaded first, which can contain any shared settings. This is wp-config.default.php

The environment-specific file is then loaded, this is wp-config.{environment}.php where {environment} is replaced by the environment name.

Environment values

Environment values can be whatever you like. They match to their corresponding wp-config.{environment}.php config file.

Common environment values we use at Studio 24 include:

• production (the live website)
• staging (the test website for client review)
• development (the local development copy of the website)

Setting the environment

The current environment is detected in one of three ways:

Environment variable

You can set an environment variable called WP_ENV to set which environment the website uses in your webserver configuration.

This is commonly done via Apache in your virtual host declaration:

SetEnv WP_ENV production

If you don't use Apache consult your webserver documentation.

Server hostname

You can also edit the wp-config.env.php file and define what hostnames are used for which environments.

Just edit the PHP switch statement and enter the correct hostname (without http:// or the trailing slash) as the case value. You can then define which environment is used for that hostname via the WP_ENV constant.

For example to set www.mywebsite.com as the live production environment, staging.mywebsite.com as the staging environment and mywebsite.dev as the local development environment the code is:

switch ($hostname) {
    case 'mywebsite.dev':
        define('WP_ENV', 'development');
        break;
    case 'staging.mywebsite.com':
        define('WP_ENV', 'staging');
        break;
    case 'www.mywebsite.com':
    default: 
        define('WP_ENV', 'production');
}

You'll notice the live website URL is also the default case.

If you use localhost for your local test website, just set the development hostname case to localhost.

WP-CLI argument

If you're using WP-CLI you can specify your environment via the --env argument. Usage is:

--env=<environment>

For example:

wp help --env=development    

Installing

1. First make a backup of your existing wp-config.php file.

2. Copy the following files to your WordPress installation:

    wp-config.env.php
    wp-config.default.php
    wp-config.php
   

3. Either set the website environments you wish to support via wp-config.env.php or via your webserver configuration.

4. Create one wp-config.{environment}.php file for each environment. You can use the sample files provided in this repository:

    wp-config.development.php
    wp-config.production.php
    wp-config.staging.php
   

5. Review your backup wp-config.php file and copy config settings to either the default config file or the environment config files as appropriate.

6. Update config settings across your config files as appropriate, for example database settings are usually different between environments.

7. Remember to update the authentication unique keys and salts in wp-config.default.php

You should now be able to load up the website in each different environment and everything should work just fine! It should now be safe to delete your backup wp-config.php file.