Site configuration¶

This chapter describes the configuration options for your sites. There’s also global configuration.

Site config locations¶

Configuration for sites is stored:

in a priv/zotonic_site.config file in the site directory
optionally, in files in the site’s priv/config.d/ directory. This is so that automated provisioning tools can easily override site configuration.

The config.d files will extend and/or override the configuration options from the zotonic_site.config file. So if the same key is present in both zotonic_site.config and config.d/some-file, the value from some-file will be used. The files under config.d/ are read in alphabetical order.

Parameters¶

Important

After changing any of these configuration parameters, restart the site for the change to take effect.

admin_password¶

The password for the admin user:

{admin_password, "top_secret"},

dbhost¶

Database host that the site connects to. Example:

{dbhost, "127.0.0.1"},

dbport¶

Port of the database server. Example:

{dbport, 5432},

dbuser¶

Database user.

dbpassword¶

Database password.

dbdatabase¶

Database name.

dbschema¶

PostgreSQL Database schema. Defaults to public. Example:

{dbschema, "some_site"},

In Zotonic, a single PostgreSQL database can host the data of multiple sites. This does not work using table prefixing, but instead, Zotonic uses PostgreSQL’s native feature of database schemas.

A database schema is basically another database inside your database. You need to create any schema other than “public” first:

CREATE SCHEMA some_site;
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA some_site TO some_db_user;

And restart Zotonic.

depcache_memory_max¶

The maximum amount of memory a site may take (in MB). The depcache caches various results of function calls and database queries in memory. Example:

{depcache_memory_max, 100},

hostname¶

The hostname and port part of the site URL. This is used to determine to which site an incoming request should be routed. Example:

{hostname, "127.0.0.1"},

Note that the hostname does not specify on which port Zotonic will listen; this is configured globally.

hostalias¶

A list of alias hostnames for the site. By default, Zotonic redirects these to hostname (see redirect). Example:

{hostalias, [
    "example.com",
    "www.example.com",
    "example.net",
    "www.example.net"
]},

redirect¶

Whether or not to redirect the host-aliases (listed by the hostalias directives) to the main hostname. Defaults to true, to prevent content duplication: it is good web practice to let your content live on a single URL only:

{redirect, true},

skeleton¶

Set by the zotonic addsite command, this settings tells Zotonic which skeleton site to use. Example:

{skeleton, blog},

install_modules¶

List of all modules that are activated when the site is started. This overrides the default list of modules installed by the skeleton. After adding a module here, restart the site to load the module. Example:

{install_modules, [
    mod_admin,
    mod_menu,
    mod_your_custom_module
]},

To inherit the list of modules from a skeleton, add a {skeleton, <name>} and it will install the list of modules from that skeleton as well.

ip_whitelist¶

List of TCP/IP addresses and their netmasks. The default admin user password (“admin”) will only be accepted for an IP in thie whitelist. This protects development systems that are exposed to the internet. This can also be configured globally. Default:

{ip_whitelist, "127.0.0.0/8,10.0.0.0/8,192.168.0.0/16,172.16.0.0/12,::1,fd00::/8"}

smtphost¶

Hostname you want e-mail messages to appear from. See E-mail handling.

websockethost¶

The hostname that will be used for websocket requests. This hostname will be used in the browser for setting up the websocket connection. It can be used to configure a different port number for the websocket connection. For example:

{websockethost, "example.com:443"},

installer¶

Override the default zotonic installer (z_installer). <module> should make sure that the database, if used, is setup properly along with any required data. Note that it is z_installer that is processing the install_modules and install_menu options, so if this module is not used then those menus and modules will not be installed unless the new module performs those operations. Example:

{installer, your_installer_erlang_module},

service_api_cors¶

See Uploading files.

Setting module-specific config values in the site config¶

It is also possible to add m_config values for modules to the site’s sitename/priv/zotonic_site.config file. To do this, add clauses like this to the site’s config:

{mod_foo, [{key, value}, ...]}

Using environment variables in the site config¶

Any variable in your site’s zotonic_site.config file can be retrieved from the OS environment variables. To do so, wrap the config value in a {env, ...} tuple. For instance, to use the DB_HOST environment variable as the database host, put the following as the dbhost config value:

{dbhost, {env, "DB_HOST"}},

Besides {env, "NAME"} tuple, you can also specify {env, "NAME", "default value"} for the case the environment variable is not set:

{dbhost, {env, "DB_HOST", "localhost"}},

To convert environment variables to integer (e.g. for the database port), use env_int:

{dbhost, {env_int, "DB_PORT"}},

or, with default value:

{dbhost, {env_int, "DB_PORT", "5432"}},

Note that the default value needs to be a string in this case, not an int.