Introducing DriftSync: move WordPress config as a reviewable release

Today we’re launching DriftSync: a way to move WordPress configuration between environments as a reviewable, reversible release — not a pile of settings you re-enter by hand and hope you got right. It’s free and complete on WordPress.org, and it runs no code.

The problem: redoing settings by hand#

You built something on staging. New permalinks, a reworked menu, a plugin’s options dialed in over an afternoon of trial and error. Now it has to reach production. So you open two browser tabs, put them side by side, and start copying values across — a checkbox here, a text field there — praying you don’t fat-finger a setting on the live site while everyone’s watching.

It’s slow, it’s error-prone, and it happens directly against production with no preview and no undo. A full database migration is the usual escape hatch, but that’s a sledgehammer: it drags along content, users and everything else when all you wanted was a dozen settings.

DriftSync reframes it as a release#

DriftSync treats a set of configuration changes the way you’d treat shipping code: as a deliberate release with a review step and a way back. The loop is always the same five moves.

• Select — pick exactly the settings you want to move. Nothing you didn’t choose travels.
• Dry-run diff — see, field by field, what apply would add, overwrite, merge, hold or skip on the target. Reviewing writes nothing, so it’s always safe to run.
• Snapshot — a restore point is captured automatically, right before anything changes.
• Apply — the reviewed values are written to the target, and nothing else.
• Audit — every apply is recorded in History, so you can see what changed, when, and by whom — and roll it back in one click.

The dry-run diff is the centre of that loop, not an afterthought. You approve a change knowing exactly what it does before a single byte is written.

It runs no code#

This is the part that makes DriftSync safe to point at a live site. A config bundle is plain, human-readable JSON — never PHP, JavaScript or a shell command. There is nothing in it that can run. It is only data, applied to settings.

{
	"blogname": "Acme",
	"timezone_string": "Europe/London",
	"permalink_structure": "/%postname%/",
	"active_plugins": ["woocommerce/woocommerce.php"],
	"mailchimp_api_key": { "held": true }
}

Because a bundle is just data you can read, you can review it in the diff, commit it to git, and hand it to a teammate for a second look. Secrets never leak into that file: on export they’re scanned and held, not blanked, so applying a bundle never wipes the API key that already lives on the target. More on that in secrets and redaction.

Free and complete on WordPress.org#

The whole loop — select, dry-run diff, snapshot, apply, roll back — across unlimited sites is free on WordPress.org. Local-only, no account, no telemetry. It’s not a stripped-down teaser; it’s the real product, and for a lot of people it’s the whole product.

Where Pro and Cloud come in#

Everything above is free. DriftSync Pro is for teams that move configuration often and want to do it without exporting and importing files by hand:

• Direct connections between sites, so a bundle goes staging → production without a download in the middle.
• Multi-site fan-out — push one reviewed bundle to many connected sites at once.
• A team library of shared, versioned bundles with approval gates before anything goes downstream.
• Scheduling, so a reviewed release can go out at a chosen time rather than whenever someone remembers.

All of it is coordinated through DriftSync Cloud, the control plane for connections, the library and approvals. See pricing for how the tiers line up — Pro is always optional, and the free loop never expires.