If you use the application.ini config file to store differences in production and testing environments (I highly recommend it) it can be annoying to access the settings. Getting the Bootstrap first and then retrieving the settings file can be annoying and error prone.

It turns out there is a much simpler way to handle this. First add the following to your Bootstrap file:

protected function _initSaveSettings(){ 
    Zend_Registry::set('options', $this->getOptions()); 
}

Then whenever you need the options you can do the following:

$options = Zend_Registry::get('options');
$setting = $options['settingName'];

Or if you're using PHP 5.4+ (I've already been burned by this twice so don't do it if you can't be sure) you can do this:

$setting = Zend_Registry::get('options')['settingName'];