Azure App Services Editor (Preview)

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Microsoft has introduced a new app services editor under development tools section of app service. It is very useful tool for the app service creators who are not app/web developer or don’t carry hand-on experience on various command line editing tools such as nano editor. App creators can simply login into azure portal and open their app services to perform editing directly from the browser and test the changes simultaneously.

I can take a real-life example to show you the power and simplicity of this unique improvement. Many of us create and manage websites using Azure app services. When you deploy WordPress sites, you might find something interesting about WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) under general settings. It is still HTTP http://<yourwebsite.domain>, while you are using certificate and have configured your public website url with HTTPS. These settings are greyed out and your security monitoring app might send you an alert to update it to https.

In general, there are 3 ways to update.

  1. Use general settings and update it.
  2. Change through either functions.php or wp-config.php file.
  3. Change through database using phpMyAdmin

Note: You can learn more about difference between these URLs and public website URLs through https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-change-your-wordpress-site-urls-step-by-step/

But let me help you to make these changes in either functions.php or wp-config.php file through app service editor.

Just go to App Service Editor and click on GO à

It will ask you for authentication and open the editor, where you could select the appropriate file to make the changes and it will save the changes automatically. In my case, I am editing wp-config.php.

define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘https://’. filter_input(INPUT_SERVER, ‘HTTP_HOST’, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING));

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘https://’. filter_input(INPUT_SERVER, ‘HTTP_HOST’, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING));

To verify the changes, go to your WordPress general settings and see if both the URLs have been updated with HTTPS.