The Site Settings page is where the administrator chooses the main appearance settings of the Ushahidi platform, e.g. the characteristics of the homepage, the main navigation, and the contact information.
- Site Name
This is the main title that appears on the right side of the your homepage and it is normally the title of your project.
- Site tagline
This is the tagline that appears below the title on the home page, which normally gives more detailed description of what the platform is about or what the platform intends to monitor or show.
This is the (optional) image across the top of each page. The banner area is 960 pixels wide by 144 pixels high; images smaller than this will be displayed in the banner area, but might look a little strange (as will images much larger than this).
- Site Email Address
This is the email address that will be shown in the Information Box on the home page, which is the one that users will use to email you information or reports. This email address will be publicly displayed on the website, so it is recommended that you create an email address specifically for this, and not to use a personal one.
To have this function working you need to configure the email account settings by clicking on the “configure your email account settings” or just by clicking on the Toolbar tab Email.
- The Site Message is an optional message that you can add on the top of your user page and that can be used for different purposes: you can use it to advertise your short code, if you have one; to put a disclaimer of responsibility, or anything else you want to let people know straight forward.
- Site Copyright Message
The Copyright message is where you can let you users know what kind of copyright license your platform submitted is under. The message will appear on the bottom of the homepage
- Site Language
Here is where you decided the language for your Ushahidi platform. This function will not translate the admin part of the platform, but only the homepage and the users settings.
- Display Contact Page
Here is where you can decide to have the Contact page in the main Toolbar in the homepage4. If “No” is selected, the page will not be available for users to contact the administrators of the Platform, but they will still be able to send emails to the address showed on the homepage if configured.
- Items per page – Front End
This is where you can choose how many items will be displayed in the pages opened by the user, such as the Reports page or the News Feeds page.
- Items per Page – Admin
This is where you can choose how many items will be displayed in the Admin page, like the Reports page or the Message page.
- Allow Users to Submit Reports
You can decide to have the Submit Reports in the main toolbar on the homepage to allow users to submit report using the online form. If the NO is selected, the page will not be available for users to submit reports directly on line6, but they will still be able to send emails to the address showed on the homepage or to send SMS if configured.
- Allow Users to Subscribe for Alerts
- Alerts Email Address
This is the address that will send the Alerts via email. It is possible to use the same address configured in the Site Email Address section above. In this case, remember that the POP function of the email account needs to be allowed in order to be able to send outgoing messages.
- Allow Users to Submit Comments to Reports
Here is where you can decide to have the Comments function in the Report page. If the “no” is selected, the users will not be able to comments on reports uploaded in the Ushahidi platform.7
- Include RSS News Feed on the Website
This is where you can decide if you want to have the RSS Feeds Box displayed on the homepage.
- Enable Statistics (Stored on Ushahidi's server)
Hit statistics are stored on a server controlled by Ushahidi. By enabling this option, you gain access to hit statistics directly in your admin panel. By disabling it, you will stopcollecting statistics and will be unable to recover traffic stats collected while this is turned off.
- The administrator may decide whether to cache pages and reports on the website, speeding up loading time. This is particularly helpful when working with low-bandwidth audiences.
- Cache Pages Lifetime
If caching is enabled, here the administrator may set how long the pages are cached for before users visiting pages on the website should be served a new version of the page rather than the cached version saved on their personal computer.
- Private Deployment
- Manually Approve Users
- Require User Email Confirmation
- Google Analytics
- This function allows the administrator to sync the platform with Google Analytics by inserting the proper ID.9
- Akismet Key
The Akismet Key allows the administrator to have Akismet pre-screening the messages coming in to look for spam. To be able to use this function the administrator needs to be registered for a WordPress account and get a free API key.
- Twitter Search Terms
This tab allows you to enter the Twitter hashtags connected with the platform. It is possible to choose more than one hashtag, separated by a comma. It is recommended that a short and clear hashtag be chosen. This hashtag will also appear on the Information Box on the homepage so that people can use it to post on Twitter messages related to your platform. All the twitter messages that will be posted on line with the hashtag(s) inserted here will also appear in the admin page on the Messages section/Twitter so that they can be transformed into reports directly by the admin.
- This is the function that combines the individual report markers in the same area on the map to display as a clustered dot displaying the number of individual reports in said cluster. This function allows one to see how a certain area is affected as compared to other areas. Once the user zooms in on the map the clustering disappears, while the more you zoom out the more the dots get clustered together.
NOTE: This function has some known problems with the KML and KMZ files that carry data and that display areas, so if you have those files on your platform you may have to disable the clustering to have the areas display correctly on the map.
- Default Color for All Categories
This is the color of the All Categories tab. As default this color is set on CC0000, which is red. To change the color just click on the tab and use the pop up window that will appear to chose another color.