Wp Config.php _best_ ⟶
At a minimum, a valid wp-config.php must define these constants:
They catalogued the contents for a week. Volunteers from a local historical society—some old employees, some new archivists—came in with gloves and apps and a hunger for salvage. They digitized.
Using this specific combination allows you to safely diagnose application crashes behind the scenes without exposing vulnerable system file paths to your public visitors. 6. Security Hardening Configurations
These commands are particularly useful for automating deployments and ensuring consistency across development, staging, and production environments. wp config.php
| Do ✅ | Don't ❌ | |-------|---------| | Set file permissions to 600 or 640 | Leave it readable by everyone ( 644 or 666 ) | | Move it web root if possible | Commit it to public GitHub repos | | Use unique, long salts from WordPress.org salt generator | Hardcode credentials in multiple places | | Keep a secure backup with credentials | Edit it with plain-text-unaware editors that add BOM |
Keep your secrets in people's hands. The internet forgets slowly but it forgives not at all.
: Remove or set WP_DEBUG back to false once you’ve resolved the issue. At a minimum, a valid wp-config
Rename wp-config-sample.php (provided with WordPress) to wp-config.php , then edit it with your actual database credentials.
WP_DEBUG and error handling
When you encounter a PHP error on your site, a blank "white screen of death," or any other unexplained behavior, enabling WordPress's debugging mode is your first step toward a solution. To do this, edit your wp-config.php file and set define('WP_DEBUG', true); . This will force WordPress to display PHP errors directly on the screen, providing you with a detailed error message that includes the specific file and line number where the problem occurred. Using this specific combination allows you to safely
Database table prefix
The advanced settings section includes settings for character encoding, caching, and other advanced configurations:
/** * For developers: WordPress debugging mode * * Change this to true to enable display of notices during development. * It is strongly recommended that plugin and theme developers use WP_DEBUG * in their development environments. * * @link https://codex.wordpress.org/Debugging_in_WordPress */ define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );