Environments

Automatic Base URL

PyroCMS guesses your base URL so you don't have to enter it in as a config and change it when you move from development to production. That means you can launch the same code on your localhost as well as your production server and never have to change any URL configs.

If you find PyroCMS is not able to guess your base URL, you can add in manually in system/cms/config/config.php by altering the base_url config;

 $config['base_url']    = '';

Telling PyroCMS What The Current Environment Is

On Apache, you can tell PyroCMS what environment to load by setting a variable in your .htaccess file using the following syntax:

 SetEnv PYRO_ENV production

Once you've done this you'll need to be careful not to copy your .htaccess back to your development server by mistake (or vice-versa). If you're using git you can prevent this with .gitignore, as described below.

If you are using Nginx and php-fpm, you can add PYRO_ENV parameter to Nginx config file like this:

 fastcgi_param PYRO_ENV production;

Your choices for the value of PYRO_ENV are:

• development
• staging
• production

Once you set your PYRO_ENV, PyroCMS will use that information to do things like use the right database credentials. You can also use this data in your layouts to check what environment you are running the site in.

Multiple Database Environments

PyroCMS can also choose the database based on your environment. Let's say you have two databases - one on your local machine for development, and one on your production server. You can enter in both of the connection details into the system/cms/config/database.php file.

If you open up system/cms/config/database.php, you'll see an array of database connection configuration for each environment. For example, here is the developemnt database configuration:

 // Development
 $db[PYRO_DEVELOPMENT] = array(
    'hostname'      =>  'localhost',
    'username'      =>  'root',
    'password'      =>  '',
    'database'      =>  'pyrocms',
    'dbdriver'      =>  'mysql',
    'dbprefix'      =>  '',
    'active_r'      =>  TRUE,
    'pconnect'      =>  TRUE,
    'db_debug'      =>  TRUE,
    'cache_on'      =>  FALSE,
    'char_set'      =>  'utf8',
    'dbcollat'      =>  'utf8_unicode_ci',
    'port'          =>  3306,

    // 'Tough love': Forces strict mode to test your app for best compatibility
    'stricton'      => TRUE,
 );

Each of these corresponds to a database group in your database.php configuration file.

Checking the Environment In Layouts

If you'd like to conditionally check the environment in your PyroCMS layout, you can do so with the global:environment tag:

{{ if global:environment == 'production' }}
	// Production-only content
{{ endif }}

Ignoring Folders with Git

If you have your project with PyroCMS on git, you can ignore files that you shouldn't share between environments by creating a .gitignore file and adding files and folders you want it to ignore to it. If you have pulled down PyroCMS files using git, you'll notice there is already a robust .gitignore included with the repo that you can customize to your needs.