Beyond simplicity, though, I find that a function actually does have some advantages when it comes to referencing static content. For example, if you’re serving HUGE amounts of content, you can’t (easily) implement load balancing through a config file, whereas it is simple in a function. And if a developer ever did want to “upgrade” to using an external config file, the value can just as easily be accessed from the function as well (albeit an extra step in that case).

I say that bc what you’re talking ab is deploying to different environments. This is a common problem. You don’t want to mess with hardcoding that in a php file. That is an old school way of doing it. It’s best practice to put configuration settings in a configuration txt file, tho technically you could still put it in a php file if you really want to. On each environment you have a different config file. I would NOT do it based on the URL, bc that is not reliable and can also be faked.

Now for the poor man’s deployment you can just keep different copies of the config in a folder and call them conf-prod.txt, conf-dev.txt, conf-local.txt, etc and copy over the one you need as conf.txt on the server or locally.

What I do is I use source control, CVS or SVN and use a deployment script to do deployment for me. This is more advanced than some like to get, tho I don’t think they’re too bad once you get the hang of it. I know rails has it’s own deployment thing built in, but I could never find one for PHP. I think most ppl code their own, like myself. Anyways I switched over to that this past year and it’s so much better.

Anyways you’re on the right track. I always use absolute URLs for my image paths and links bc it just causes less problems I think. I always have a config settings called web_url and static_url and I prepend that anywhere I have links. I also use code igniter for custom development which abstracts some of that.

This has got to be one of the most useful blogs, for me at least.

I do this with my laptop when I don’t have internet access.