Application modes

You can run the Commerce application in any of the following modes:

Module name Description
default Enables you to deploy the Commerce application on a single server without changing any settings. However, default mode is not optimized for production.
To deploy the Commerce application on more than one server or to optimize it for production, change to one of the other modes.
  • Static view file caching is enabled
  • Exceptions are not displayed to the user; instead, exceptions are written to log files.
  • Hides custom X-Magento-* HTTP request and response headers
developer Intended for development only, this mode:
  • Disables static view file caching
  • Provides verbose logging
  • Enables automatic code compilation
  • Enables enhanced debugging
  • Shows custom X-Magento-* HTTP request and response headers
  • Results in the slowest performance
  • Shows errors on the frontend
production Intended for deployment on a production system, this mode:
  • Does not show exceptions to the user (exceptions are written to logs only).
  • Serves static view files from cache only.
  • Prevents automatic code file compilation. New or updated files are not written to the file system.
  • Does not allow you to enable or disable cache types in the Admin. See enabling and disabling the cache.
  • Some fields, such as the Advanced and Developer system configuration sections in the Admin, are not available in production mode.
maintenance Intended to prevent access to a site while it is being updated or reconfigured, this mode:
  • Redirects site visitors to a default Service Temporarily Unavailable page.
  • When the site is in maintenance mode, the var/ directory contains the .maintenance.flag file.
  • You can configure maintenance mode to allow visitor access from a specified list of IP addresses.
INFO

Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure supports only the production and maintenance modes.

Default mode

As its name implies, default mode is how Commerce operates if no other mode is specified. Default mode enables you to deploy the Commerce application on a single server without changing any settings. However, default mode is not as optimized for production as is production mode.

To deploy the Commerce application on more than one server or to optimize it for production, change to one of the other modes.

In default mode:

  • Errors are logged to the file reports at server, and never shown to a user
  • Static view files are cached
  • Default mode is not optimized for a production environment, primarily because of the adverse performance impact of static files being dynamically generated rather than materialized. In other words, creating static files and caching them has a greater performance impact than generating them using the static files creation tool.

See Set the operation mode.

Developer mode

Run the Commerce application in developer mode when you are extending or customizing it.

In developer mode:

  • Static view files are not cached; they are written to the pub/static directory every time they are called
  • Uncaught exceptions display in the browser
  • System logging in var/report is verbose
  • An exception is thrown in the error handler, rather than being logged
  • An exception is thrown when an event subscriber cannot be invoked

See Set the operation mode.

Production mode

Run Commerce in production mode when it is deployed to a production server. After optimizing the server environment, such as the database and web server, you should run the static view files deployment tool to write static view files to the pub/static directory.

This improves performance by providing all necessary static files at deployment instead of forcing Commerce to dynamically locate and copy (materialize) static files on demand during run time.

In production mode:

  • Static view files are not materialized, and URLs for them are composed on the fly. Static view files are served from the cache only.
  • Errors are logged to the file system and are never displayed to the user.
  • You can enable and disable cache types only using the command line.
  • You cannot enable or disable cache types using the Admin.

Maintenance mode

Run the Commerce application in maintenance mode to take your site offline while you complete maintenance, upgrade, or configuration tasks. In maintenance mode, the site redirects visitors to a default Service Temporarily Unavailable page.

You can create a custom maintenance page, manually enable and disable maintenance mode, and configure maintenance mode to allow visitors from authorized IP addresses to view the store normally. See enable and disable maintenance mode.

If you are using Commerce on cloud infrastructure, the Commerce application runs in maintenance mode during the deploy phase. When the deployment completes successfully, the Commerce application returns to running in production mode. See Deployment hooks in the Commerce Cloud guide.

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