A key concept in VuFind® is the “local settings directory.” This directory should contain all of your customized configuration files. Storing all of your modified settings in one place makes it easier to upgrade VuFind® and also allows you to create multiple distinct configurations for a single instance of VuFind®.

Although this convention offers power and convenience, it can lead to some confusion. When editing configurations, always be sure you edit the “local” version. You should not modify the default configurations found in the “config/local” subdirectory of your VuFind® home directory. Always copy configuration files into your local directory before changing them.

VuFind®'s distribution includes a default settings directory called “local.” If you accept default settings when running VuFind®'s installer, this is where all of your configurations will be found. (For example, on most Linux systems, config.ini will be found at /usr/local/vufind/local/config/vufind/config.ini).

VuFind® supports several options for inheriting configuration from parent files. See the Configuration File Inheritance page for more information.

Starting with VuFind® 9.1, you can place a DirLocations.ini configuration file in the root of your local settings directory in order to customize some of its behavior. This can be used to chain together a series of local directories – useful if you want to inherit some files from a shared pool while overriding others (i.e. if you are managing a single instance with many customized front end views, as in a consortial situation). See the provided example configuration for more details.

When running command-line scripts, you should make sure that a VUFIND_LOCAL_DIR environment variable is set so that scripts know where to find your local settings. If you fail to set up this environment variable, VuFind® may attempt to load default settings instead of using your modified configurations.

See some useful applications of the local directory on the installing multiple instances page.