---
title: "About the settings.php file"
date: "2022-02-24T18:59:25+00:00"
summary:
image:
type: "article"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/help/93686-about-settingsphp-file"
id: "25d5f367-0001-4bf6-aa3b-3cc22b2e95dc"
---

Issue
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At some point, you may need to view and/or edit the configuration settings for your site.

Resolution
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The **settings.php** file contains website-specific configuration information, including the Drupal database settings. To view the file in your Drupal codebase, go to (your\_docroot)/sites/default/settings.php.

The following list provides examples of settings that you can configure:

*   **Database settings**
    
    The type, username, password, host, and database name settings for your database. In addition, you can set target fall-back databases and the encoding format in which Drupal stores its data, for example UTF-8.
    
*   **Website URL and subsites**
    
    The location and name of one or more directories containing a `settings.php` file determine which one is addressed when loading your Drupal website(s). This enables you to install multiple Drupal websites or define subsites that run on a single Drupal codebase.
    
*   **Access control for `update.php`**
    
    By default, the `settings.php` file blocks access to the update script, `update.php`, for non-site-administrators. You should not leave it accessible to other users.
    
*   **Base URL**
    
    This is an optional setting that establishes the base URL of your website (`http://site_URL`) to help resolve conflicts between different website domains.
    
*   **PHP settings**
    
    You can set and alter various PHP settings for your website, such as session lifetime and session cookie lifetime.