[wpmu-trac] [WordPress MU Trac] #641: blog URLs redundantly defined and hardcoded in DB - headache

[WordPress MU Trac]

#641: blog URLs redundantly defined and hardcoded in DB - headache
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 Reporter:  jeremyclarke  |       Owner:  somebody
     Type:  defect        |      Status:  new     
 Priority:  normal        |   Milestone:          
Component:  component1    |     Version:          
 Severity:  normal        |    Keywords:          
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 While testing an upgrade to 1.5 and moving servers (I used an alternate
 domain to set up a staging version on the new server) I noticed that the
 SITEURL and HOME options are sometimes used to create links to parts of mu
 blogs while other times the information in the 'wp_site' table (for the
 root blog) and the 'wp_blogs' table (for root blog and children) is used.

 Specifically, it seems that the general existence of the children blogs is
 dependent on the wp_blogs table ( 'domain' + 'path' ), while lots of parts
 of the admin (the admin blog list, the link to 'view site') depend on the
 values stored in the 'wp_options' tables of each individual blog (i.e.
 SITEURL and HOME).

 Overall, this creates a pretty big annoying mess. It makes it insanely
 tedious to set up a working stage backup of site on a new domain because
 so many DB values need to be modified, especially considering the fact
 that really you should only have to change it in one place, the single row
 in 'wp_site'.

 Has this come up before? It seems like MU should choose one source for
 each blog url and stick to it, at least on a blog by blog basis. Given
 what i've seen of the DB structure, the 'wp_blogs' table seems like the
 best overarching resource. Could MU just ignore the settings in wp_options
 of individual blogs in favor of the values stored in 'wp_blogs'? It seems
 like it wouldn't be too hard to override the behavior (or fill the holes
 where the old values are still used, seeing as at least some parts of the
 system (the MU parts) are already usign the wp_blogs values, because many
 thigns worked after i only changed those but hadn't altered the
 'wp_options' versions).

 Also: using the HOME and SITEURL wp-config.php defines in wp-config.php as
 one would with Wordpress.org causes ALL the sites to have their urls
 overridden, breaking everything but the root blog.

 I.e.

 {{{
  //define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://siteurl');
  //define('WP_HOME', 'http://siteurl');
 }}}


 Ideally that probably shouldn't happen as there is no reason for someone
 to want that behavior (but I can't help thinking other people will try the
 same thing and get burnt worse than careful me). If the HOME and SITEURL
 constants were changed for the reasons above then ideally they might also
 fix this.

 In a perfect world you would be able to override the value in 'wp_site' in
 wp-config.php and have it affect all the blogs in MU, but that's just me
 dreaming (and I can imagine reasons why being ABLE to have multiple
 domains on one MU install is useful). Making an option for having multiple
 domains (with the default being to use one authoritative domain) could be
 a good solution for this.

 Thoughts? I'm more familiar with the WP.org world than MU so let me know
 if I'm missing something important. I think this would be really useful
 for anyone who tends to keep staging and dev servers (which we all should,
 right?)

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/641>
WordPress MU Trac <http://mu.wordpress.org/>
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