wp_options siteurl vs wp-config

  • Running WP 5.0.2 with mysql on Ubuntu 16.04.

    I auto-deploy my personal WP installs and set the siteurl via the wp-config method:

    define( 'WP_HOME', 'https://example.com' );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://example.com' );

    Recently I noticed that while accessing the site via example.com, I was getting random errors. All image requests would redirect and lots of cross-site security errors. I have a second domain (say example2.com) that redirects to example.com…but the site should run under example.com only.

    Originally when I setup the site I was going to use example2.com as the primary…but changed my mind and updated the provisioning scripts to use example.com instead.

    so wp-config.php originally had WP_HOME/SITEURL set to example2.com and then was changed to example.com.
    The database (SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name='siteurl';) is set to use example2.com still and certain types of generated URLs (e.g. for image resources) are using the url from the database as the baseurl instead of the url from wp-config.php.

    So the site runs under example.com but a lot of resources are requested from example2.com…which redirects to example.com so you don’t notice at first…but lots of little problems quickly become apparent.

    Is this a bug or do I just not understand the precedence of various settings.

    The UI (Settings>General) have siteurl/home text fields greyed out and show the values from wp-config.php…but the database doesn’t reflect that.

    Of course I can just add a little mysql to my provisioning to make sure that database field is getting updated…but seems like the values in wp-config should take precedence and/or cause the db config to be updated.

    Same issue for home option.
    SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name='home';

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by mattpr.

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  • From the codex:

    Setting this value in wp-config.php overrides the wp_options table value for siteurl. Adding this in can reduce the number of database calls when loading your site.

    So by defining WP_SITEURL you are overwriting the value in the database. The URL in the constant and the database are used for the same thing.

    If you are seeing requests to images from a different URL then they are probably images in posts that were saved before the URL was changed. When you add an image to a post, the full URL of the images is saved, and this URL does not change when you use the constant or change the database setting.

    To change old URLs inside your content you need to do a search and replace in the database. See this section of the codex for options.

    Thread Starter mattpr

    (@mattpr)

    Thanks for the quick reply.

    The site/home change was made before the site was launched. No pages, no posts, no images.

    Many of the errors are related to cross-site scripting issues…with wordpress javascript being loaded from the old domain rather than new domain.

    This change was made months ago and we just started working on the site…but I also did cache/cookie clearing just to make sure.

    I confirmed with mysql that the value in the database for siteurl and home were the old values and did not reflect what was in wp-config.php. ie the db never gets updated when values are set in wp-config.php. Then the problem arises because it seems that wp uses the db value instead of the value in wp-config?

    Updating these values manually in the database to the correct values resolved all the problems immediately.

    Hence I figure it is a bug of some sort. Would expect either:

    – if vars are set in wp-config.php, then db values are ignored or
    – db value is used globally, but when vars are set in wp-config.php the db value is updated.

    I am guessing most wp users are just setting this in the db via the Settings>General page…which I am guessing isn’t broken.

    One more thought… I am appending these defines to wp-config.php via my provisioning scripts. Perhaps being included after the require_once for wp-settings.php causes an issue? Maybe wordpress is functioning as expected and my defines just aren’t getting picked up from wp-config for some reason? I wouldn’t think the order of the defines in that file would matter so much but that would also explain it. On the other hand…the Settings>General page shows the home/siteurl boxes greyed out and shows the values from wp-config.php and not from the db. So still think there is something wrong here.

    
/* ... */
/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');
define('WP_HOME', 'https://www.example.com');

define('WP_SITEURL', 'https://www.example.com');
/* EOF */

    The original install was done with whatever the latest stable WP was on October 29. Just checked: 4.9.8. The domain change was shortly thereafter. I did the upgrade to 5.0.2 this week (from wp-admin UI) before we started developing the site content. So possible this is a bug from a pre5 release.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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