hdweb

Hi,

Otto, I found this thread from many years ago in which you also neg’d on relative URLs.

There are many, many other posts about this issue as well. Google brings up *a lot* of hits showing that there are *a lot* of people that have found this problem irritating for many, many years. After so many years and millions of google results, it does appear that people have a legitimate concern. Perhaps all those users and developers from year after year may have a point.

The serialized data problem in WP means that a search and replace for an absolute URL will break many parts of a WP site. Users and developers understand there are tools and methods for handling this, but they are workarounds for a problem that is easy to solve – rklrkl has provided an elegant solution. Instead of dismissing it out of hand, let’s have a real discussion.

I understand that personal attacks are a problem – but setting that aside there are still valid points to discuss. Much of what rklrkl’s posts brought up were not discussed.

Otto, I don’ think it’s useful to say “The simple fact is that absolute URLs work better for the reasons I have already stated” — unless you explain *why* the reasons you stated make sense.

A fairly standard workflow in IT is to work in dev, move it to UAT, move it to staging, and then to production. There are variations on this theme, but the general idea is the same. This is not an unusual workflow at all.

To suggest that everyone should work in the same fashion, or use a “hosts” file ignores workflows that a lot of folks have to use. I develop on a shared server with other people – changing a hosts file isn’t a possibility. Nor is copying everything to a local machine.

Is there a solution for development workflow that doesn’t require a lot of manual work or clunky tools? How do I implement automated builds in WordPress?

Other folks have valid experiences as well and work under different constraints. A “my way or the highway” approach doesn’t allow for growth and learning. If you have a good developmental workflow for WordPress, I’m all ears.