Site and theme URLs not correct in control panel settings

Question

When I load Site > CP Home > General Configuration I see the right values in the field: http://www.example.com for an instant. When the page fully loads it will change to http://dev.example.com. The same happens in my local build. It too initially is correct (http://local.example.com) but then switches to http://dev.example.com an instant after the page loads.

Most everything works on these sites. The only issue (other than it being very strange to see) may be Lamplighter. That isn't working and they say the value in that field must match the actual page URL otherwise it will not work.

I read on the EE bug tracker that EE stores some config variables in the database. Does the base_url value get stored in the database? I looked but could not find anything.

I was using Focus Labs multi environment config, but even after reverting back to the stock EE config, index, admin, and database files it is doing it. That leads me to believe the database is storing the information. I have imported and exported the database from Dev to Production and local.

Answer 1

I make a few changes to the Master Config in my Base EE install. I made some pull requests to the core, but I am not sure if they were approved. I actually change my environment to the follow, it makes life much simpler with domains.

Basically the following code strips the WWW from the URL and ensure you only have to define the domain once. Real simple tweak that goes a long way. I am not totally sure if I understand your error, but I use this to do something similar.

if ( ! defined('ENV'))
{
    switch (str_replace('www.', '', $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']))
    {
        case 'domain.com' :
            define('ENV', 'prod');
            define('ENV_FULL', 'Production');
            define('ENV_DEBUG', FALSE);
        break;

        case 'dev.domain.com' :
            define('ENV', 'dev');
            define('ENV_FULL', 'Development');
            define('ENV_DEBUG', FALSE);
        break;

        default :
            define('ENV', 'local');
            define('ENV_FULL', 'Local');
            define('ENV_DEBUG', TRUE);
        break;
    }
}

Answer 2

This doesn't directly answer your question about Master Config, but you might try giving the REElocate plugin a try: http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/reelocate

It gives you the ability to easily do a find and replace for URL and Server Path values, which can ease the pain of moving between environments and works wonders for issues like the one you're describing.