11.10. Synchronizing Configuration Versions

Last updated on

14 April 2025

Synchronize the configuration between a development and live site.

You must have a development copy of your production site. See Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”.
The core Configuration Manager module must be installed on both the development and production sites. See Section 4.3, “Installing a Module” for instructions on how to install core modules.
You must have changed configuration on either the production or development site (the source site), and want to synchronize the changes to the other site (the destination site). As an example, you can develop a new content type, fields, and views on your development site, and when it is all working correctly, deploy the changes to the live site.
All configuration that should not be synchronized between the source and destination sites must be stored in configuration overrides in the settings.php file rather than in the database. See Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”.

In the source site, in the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Configuration synchronization > Export (admin/config/development/configuration/full/export).
Click Export. Your site will generate an archive of the full site configuration. Save the file on your local computer.
In the destination site, in the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Configuration synchronization > Import (admin/config/development/configuration/full/import).
Browse to find the downloaded configuration archive, and click Upload. Your configuration archive will be uploaded to the destination site, and you will be redirected to the configuration Synchronize page (admin/config/development/configuration) with a message saying your files were uploaded.
Verify that the differences shown on the page are what you expect. You may see configuration items that have been added, deleted, or changed; for changed items, you can click View differences to see what the changes are.
When you are satisfied, click Import all to import the configuration changes.

If the changes you have made involve only one configuration item (such as one view), you can use the single configuration export/import feature to deploy the change between sites. See Section 11.9, “Deploying New Site Features”.
After the step where you export the full configuration from the source site, you might also want to unpack the archive and commit it to a version control system, such as Git, to track changes in your site configuration. See Section 11.11, “Managing File and Configuration Revisions with Git”.

Attributions

Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

This page is generated from AsciiDoc source from the User Guide. To propose a change, edit the source and attach the file to a new issue in the User Guide project. PDF and e-book formats are available on the User Guide project page.

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