Global configuration¶
This section describes the location and contents of Zotonic’s global
configuration files erlang.config and zotonic.config. There’s also
site-specific configuration.
Config file locations¶
Zotonic depends on two global config files, called zotonic.config
and erlang.config. On startup, Zotonic looks in the following
places for these files:
$HOME/.zotonic/(nodename)/$HOME/.zotonic/(version)/$HOME/.zotonic/(major-version)/$HOME/.zotonic//etc/zotonic/(nodename)//etc/zotonic/(version)//etc/zotonic/(major-version)//etc/zotonic/
The (nodename) is the name of the Zotonic Erlang node, which
defaults to zotonic001 (and can be set with $NODENAME environment
variable). Using the node name in the configuration path comes in
handy when you want to run multiple Zotonic instances simultaneously.
(version) is the minor version number of Zotonic, e.g. 1.0. This
way, you can have separate configuration files for different versions of Zotonic
which are running simultaneously.
For example, if the version is 1.2 then (version) will be 1.2 and
(major-version) will be 1.
If the Zotonic startup script finds a config file in one of the directories, it stops looking, so files in the other directories are ignored.
In the course of Zotonic starting up, it will print the locations of the global config files that it is using:
17:03:54.766 [info] Zotonic started
17:03:54.766 [info] ===============
17:03:54.766 [info] Config files used:
17:03:54.768 [info] - /home/user/.zotonic/1.0/erlang.config
17:03:54.768 [info] - /home/user/.zotonic/zotonic001/zotonic.config
The zotonic.config file¶
After installed for the first time, the ~/.zotonic/zotonic.config file is well
annoted with comments about what each setting does. When in doubt,
consult the stock apps/zotonic_launcher/priv/config/zotonic.config.in file for
explanation about all config settings.
user_sites_dir, user_modules_dir¶
Zotonic keeps sites and modules that are external to Zotonic, e.g. installed by website developers, outside the Zotonic source tree.
The directory under which Zotonic expects to find all sites is called
the User sites directory. This is configured with the config
parameter user_sites_dir. This directory defaults to
_checkouts, relative to Zotonic’s installation directory.
The directory under which Zotonic expects to find all external
modules, e.g. those installed with zotonic modules install
mod_...., is called the User modules directory. This is configured
with the config parameter user_modules_dir. This directory
defaults to _checkouts, relative to Zotonic’s installation
directory.
deps¶
The zotonic.config file can hold extra dependencies which are to
be installed as part of a user’s installation. These deps are
formatted similar to how they would be listed in a rebar.config file:
{deps,
[
{jsx, "1.4", {git, "git://github.com/talentdeficit/jsx", {tag, "v1.4"}}}
]},
On compile time, these deps are added to the list of the standard deps
from Zotonic’s rebar.config file, and cloned and compiled in the
same way.
The erlang.config file¶
The erlang.config file contains application environment variables
for the Erlang applications that Zotonic depends on. Here you can
configure for instance the paths for the log files (in
the lager section), emqtt ports, et cetera.