Now You Can Customize All The Things
Over the last several months of 2019, our team has dove head-first into supporting the customization of just about any settings in the LEMP stack. While originally we planned to “lock down” SlickStack configuration to keep things more stable, we kept hearing the same requests and questions over the past 2 years.
So, we decided to change course a bit.
Now, dozens of new options exist in the default ss-config file that were not there previously. Because these have been added at such a rapid pace during 2019, we felt it would only create confusion by announcing every single new option that is now supported.
Here is an incomplete list of things you can now customize:
- Database settings (including having a remote database)
- SSH Port (effects SFTP access too)
- TMPFS (for FastCGI cache)
- change or disable all SlickStack Cron Jobs (this is done via ss-config, not the Crontab… never!)
- MySQL mode and InnoDB tuning
- server timezone (Ubuntu)
- wp-config tuning (options are a bit limited however, to improve stability)
- custom blacklist.txt file for Plugin Blacklist
- custom functions.php default file for Custom Functions
- custom PHP and Opcache settings
- custom Throwaway Theme
Instead of locking down settings that we thought were “best” we’ve now input the recommended value for these options in the default ss-config template instead. Thus, advanced users can review our recommendations and change them if they want, but less advanced users see a warning that advanced settings are not recommended to be changed.
Still, please note that there will always remain a certain group of “settings” that we do lock down for stability reasons. Specifically, any settings that would change the file structure of Ubuntu, error logging and error handling, or other OS and volatile settings, we stick to the “Decisions, Not Options” mantra. At a certain point, SlickStack needs to evangelize best practices and create a sort of identity and typical configuration to establish a reputation and common language among our community. Thanks for your feedback!
If you have any technical suggestions, please open a Issue on our GitHub repo.
These settings are still evolving a bit and are not 100% done, but compared to last year (2018) SlickStack has matured in incredible and powerful ways…
