Wp-config.php file edits

Updated on November 27th, 2024

Flywheel has specific rules for managing your wp-config.php file.

Making changes to your wp-config.php file

Flywheel locks down your wp-config.php file and doesn’t allow changes to be made directly to it. We do this for several reasons: for security, because it gets auto-generated by our software, and because most everything you’d want to do there automatically gets configured for you.

Settings you can change yourself via the Flywheel dashboard:

WP_DEBUG You can easily switch debug mode on and off on the Advanced tab. More information in the article: How do I turn on WP_DEBUG?

WP_CACHE If you’re using a persistent caching plugin like WP Rocket, you can enable WP_CACHE in your config file from the Advanced Tab. More on that here: How do I enable WP_CACHE?

$table_prefix Change your table prefix on the Advanced tab under Database. Find more info below.

Common settings that Flywheel support can turn on and/or configure for you:

WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE WP_MULTISITE SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE PATH_CURRENT_SITE SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE Installing and configuring multisite is handled automatically by enabling Multisite from the Advanced tab of a site’s Flywheel dashboard. (Note that multisite is not compatible with Staging at this time.)

SUNRISE Older multisite installations may require support for domain mapping (aka Sunrise). This is enabled automatically when setting up multisite (as long as you check the proper box). You may need to place the sunrise.php file in the proper directory yourself, however. See the directions for the domain mapping plugin for more information.

FORCE_SSL_LOGIN FORCE_SSL_ADMIN If your site has SSL enabled, we’re happy to enable these options to force SSL connections for logins and administrative functions in WordPress®.¹

DB_CHARSET DB_COLLATE If you need to change the Charset or Collation that WordPress uses, contact support and we can update these values for you. Note: this is sometimes necessary for migrating sites from old versions of WordPress.

WPLANG Name of the language translation (.mo) file that you want to use. If you’re working in English, you can leave this blank. If you’re working in a language other than English, you can look up your language code, and then contact Flywheel support to have us change the value. More information in the article: WordPress in another language?

If there are other settings you need to be added to your wp-config.php file, please contact Flywheel support and we’d be happy to help out.

Change the table prefix on your wp-config.php file

Warning

Changing your table prefix should never be necessary for a live site, and will almost certainly break your WordPress site. Please use caution when changing this value, and do so only if you know what you’re doing. You’ve been warned.

The table prefix in WordPress specifies what string is prepended to all of the tables in your WordPress installation’s database. WordPress uses this value to determine which tables in the database it recognizes as belonging to the current site. Sites created on Flywheel have a randomly generated database prefix.

If you are migrating your site to Flywheel, you will almost always need to change the table prefix setting to match that of the tables that you are importing. (This is much easier than changing the table data to match the prefix setting.)

You can view and modify your table prefix setting in the Flywheel control panel, under the “Advanced” tab for a site:

Change the database prefix in the Advanced tab of the site's Flywheel Dashboard