Best practice site url

[fredrik-sogaard]

What is the recommended setup for site urls with Craft Cloud?

I think CRAFT_WEB_URL is used to set this runtime on Cloud (to accommodate various domains), but this doc recommends against using CRAFT_WEB_URL for site url? Should we set PRIMARY_SITE_URL for each environment on Cloud, including setting the Cloud generated preview urls?

[timkelty]

Craft Cloud automatically sets CRAFT_WEB_ROOT, but not CRAFT_WEB_URL, as that is expected to change with the hostname.

Currently, the assumption is that you would set PRIMARY_SITE_URL (or whatever var you wish), as your base site URL.
That does assume that you'd be using all preview URLs or all custom domains for a given env, not both concurrently.

After some internal discussion, we've decided on some ways to make this better:

1. Automatic site URLs for preview URLs: When accessing a preview domain, all site URLs will be overwritten with a predictable pattern, so you don't ever need to put preview domains in environment variables:
   • Primary site: https://mysite-staging-1234abc.preview.craft.cloud/
   • Secondary sites: https://mysite-staging-1234abc.preview.craft.cloud/site/{site.handle}
2. Dynamic domain environment variables
   • When creating a domain in Craft Cloud, you will be given option to register that hostname/URL as an environment variable of your choice (e.g. PRIMARY_SITE_URL). When accessing that env, that env var will be dynamically populated to the matching value of the domain/subdomain.

Would that solve your current issues?

[fredrik-sogaard]

Yes, I believe so. But for now, you recommend setting PRIMARY_SITE_URL explicitly on each env, even the preview urls?

[timkelty]

Yes, so PRIMARY_SITE_URL would likely be initially set to your preview URL (for all envs).

Once you have domains added, you would switch over, and change to use those, or keep using preview for non-prod envs, eg:

• testing: PRIMARY_SITE_URL=https://mysite-staging-1234abc.preview.craft.cloud/
• staging: PRIMARY_SITE_URL=https://staging.mysite.com
• production PRIMARY_SITE_URL=https://mysite.com

We realize this isn't all that obvious when setting things up, so we're working to improve the process. Any input is welcome!