# Global Configuration

- Draft 4.5.3

Global Configuration controls Mambo's operational settings. Changes made on this screen will update the configuration.php file. This file needs to be writable in order for you to be able to edit your configuration. This information is provided at the bottom of the Navigator. It is a good idea to make the file unwritable after changes are performed.

## Toolbar Icons

Save: Saves the changes and returns to the Control Panel/Admin Home page.
Apply: Saves the changes and keeps the Global Configuration displayed to edit.
Close: Cancels the action. Any modification is lost.

## Navigator

Provides direct access to the various parameters to be customised.
The Navigator is providing 3 types of links.
1. Site -> Site settings
Debug
Users
Meta
Statistics
SEO
Content
2. Server -> Server Settings
Database
Locale
Mail
3. Cache

## File Settings

Shows if your configuration.php file is writable or not.
Check the box to make it unwritable after saving.

##

## 1. Site Settings

##

Site Offline - Switch your websites 'Front-end ' on or off. Use this option while you are updating modules or data, and do not wish to have your visitors view the site until you are finished. Remember to reset the "Site offline" option to "No" once you're done.

Offline Message - When the site is offline (switch on 'Yes' position), this message will appear on the 'Front-end'. The default message is:
"This site is down for maintenance. Please check back again soon."
You can change this text to whatever message you would like.

System Error Message - This message will display if the initial database connection fails. You can type anything you like in this box. We suggest something non-technical, friendly and apologetic, stating that your site will be available again as soon as possible. You can use standard HTML code in this box also, for instance, <br /> to return a line. You might also consider adding an e-mail address, so that your visitors can contact your System Administrator or the Webmaster.

Site Name - Allows you to set the content of the title bar for your site. It can also be displayed in your template by inserting the following code statement into your template file [Mambo_root/templates/template name/index.php] where you wish your Site Name to appear:

%%<?php echo $_CONFIG->SITENAME; ?>%%

WYSIWYG Editor - Used to define which of the installed Text Editors will be used as default.

Popup Frontend Editing: If enabled, editing an item in the Frontend will open a pop-up window instead of the default inline editing. The advantage is that you are not restricted by the template used and get more space when editing.

List Length: Sets the default length for lists in the Administrator. Please note that if you have previously visited a page with a list, changing this setting in Global Configuration will not be immediately visible. However, the setting you specify will be honoured as a default upon your next login.

Favourites Site Icon - Enter the path to the icon that appears in some browsers next to the name and/or address of your site. By default this is the Joomla! flower icon located in the images/stories folder. This file is typically named 'favicon.ico'.

Internal Templates: Allows loading of custom Internal Templates for Components, Modules and Mambots. These templates have to be present in the Template directory.

Live Bookmarks: Implements support for Firefox Live Bookmark functionnality.

Live Bookmark where: Choose between the Home page and all pages to implement Live Bookmarks.

## Debug Settings

Debug: Allows you to view the error messages that are created by your site's php installation. It can be a handy tool for debugging if you are having problems, and for reporting errors to your System Administrator or Web host. The levels of error reporting can be set under the Global Configuration>Server tab, and are as follows:
System Default, None, Simple and Maximum.

Debug Database: displays SQL errors if present.

Log Database Queries: display or not log of SQL queries executed (for development purposes).

## User Tab

Allow User Registration: Allows you to globally set whether visitors to your site can register for a user account. If set to 'Yes', the Login Form will include the prompt “No account yet? Create one”. If set to 'No', they will not be presented with an option to register, only with the name/pass fields to log into the site.
Usertype of new users: Choose which type of users new users should automatically be created as. Choice is between Registered, Author, Editor, Publisher.
?Help: Information concerning User Types.
Use New Account Activation: If Yes, an activation link will be sent to user's e-mail address. The User can not login until he has clicked on the activation link. If No, the user will be able to login right after his account creation, without any activation.

Require Unique E-mail: Select whether you want to prevent duplicate registration with the same e-mail address. In combination with user activation this option prevents users to sign up several times using the same e-mail address.

Show Unauthorised Links: With this option turned on, all visitors will see content to which they would otherwise not have access, (that is, content given an Access Level of 'Registered' or 'Special'). With this option off, they will only see content with an Access Level of 'Public'. The Access Level for Content is selected under the Publishing tab for each item individually.

Allow users to change their name: If Yes, users will be able to change their name from the frontend.
Allow users to change their username: If yes, users will be able to change their username from the frontend.

Min. Username Length: Set the minimum amount of characters a Username may contains.

Min. Password length: Set the minimum amount of characters a Password should contain.

Frontend User Params: Allows Users to control their extra parameters options (Frontend language, Editor).

## Metadata Setings

Global Site Meta Description: Type a description of your website used to assist Search Engines. You may want to limit your description to maybe twenty words or so, depending on the Search Engine you are targeting. Make it concise and pertinent to your site's contents. You can include some of your keywords and key phrases here too. As some search engines read more than 20 words you can add one or two sentences. Make sure that the most important and relevant part of your description is in the first 20 words, this will generally be displayed in Search Engine results.

Global Site Meta Keywords: The optimal number of characters for a keyword description is said to be between 300 and 500. Do not repeat words too often and either separate your keywords with a comma or a space, or group two or three words together. 'Joomla! Open Source' would be an example of this.
Show Title Meta Tag: Shows the Title meta tag when viewing content items.
Show Author Meta Tag: Shows the Authors meta tag when viewing content items.

The Description and Keyword Meta tags will have a bearing on how Search Engines will index your site. Some Search Engines completely ignore Metadata altogether. You should do some research on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) if high rankings and Search Engine traffic are important to you.

## Statistics Tab

Statistics: If this is set to 'Yes', the browser and visitor domain statistics will be collected on the basis of settings in the Content Tab. If this is set to 'No', the browser and visitor statistics will not be collected. If your site experiences a slight 'delay' the first time a user visits the site you should set this to 'No'.

Log Content Hits by Date: Enables logging of the hits on content items, on a daily basis. There are currently no in-built analysis routines, to complement this logging feature.
Warning: this will tend to collect large amount of data over time.

Log Search Strings: Enables logging of the search text, entered by a user. Such logging facilitates the 'tuning' of your web site, giving you an insight into how your visitors are trying to find the information they seek. Analysis reporting is provided under Site->Statistics->Search Text.

## SEO Tab

Search Engine Friendly URLs: Changes the way site links are presented and optimises them so that search engines can access more of your site.
Warning: This option is ONLY available to sites hosted on Apache servers. If you use this option you must rename the 'htaccess.txt' file in your sites root folder to '.htaccess' (dot included, no extension!) via FTP BEFORE activating. If your server does not support this setting, your site might become unusable!
For additional information on SEO see the appendix here.

Dynamic Page Titles: Sets the page titles (that appear at the top on a viewers browser) to reflect page content. This helps search engines.

Page Titles format: Choose in the drop-down to show Site -Title, Title - Site or page Title only. Excludes or includes and positions the site title with the page title,, if the previous setting (Dynamic Page Titles) is enabled.

## Content Tab

Linked Titles: If 'Yes', the title of a content item will hyperlink to the item.
Read More Link: Displays a "Read More" link at the bottom of Content if main text has been provided for the Content.
Item Rating / Voting: Allows the rating of content items. If set to 'Yes', a 'Star Bar' will be shown on each content item, as well as a form for submitting your vote. The rating form is not shown for articles in 'Blog' lists.

Author Names: Show or Hide the Author's name when a content item is displayed.

Created Date and Time: Show or Hide the creation date and time when a content item is displayed.

Modified Date and Time: Show or Hide the last modified date and timewhen a content item is displayed.
Hits: Displays the number of hits (visits/clicks/accesses) an article/content has had.
PDF Icon: Show or Hide the 'PDF creation' icon / link displayed when viewing a content item.
NOTE: This will not display at all if your media directory is not writable.

Print Icon: Show or Hide the 'Printer Friendly Version' icon / link displayed when viewing a content item.

Email Icon: Show or Hide the 'Email Page to Friend' icon / link displayed when viewing a content item.
Icons: Choose here to display Text or Icons for the PDF, Print and Email Iinks.

Back Button: Allows you to show or hide a back button at the bottom of screens to make it easier for users to navigate your site.

Content Item Navigation: Shows 'Next' and 'Previous' links when viewing content items in a category.

Table of Contents with { mospagebreak }: This parameters is deprecated in Global Configuration. It is now set directly in the MOSpaging Mambot parameters.

## 2. Server Settings

The two following items are predefined during the installation and are not configurable through this tab.

Absolute Path: The absolute path is the directory information used by Joomla! on the server that orientates it to its surrounding system.

Live Site: This is the absolute URL (web address) for your installation of Mambo.

Secret Word: Unique word for every Joomla! installation. Used for security functions.

GZIP Page Compression: Allows your web server to send compressed data if supported by the server itself and the client web browser. If enabled, this could significantly decrease the load time of your site for your visitors.

Login Session Lifetime: Allows you to set the time in seconds an Administration session should be allowed to stay live before automatic logout occurs. After automatic logout, the Administrator will be required to login again using the correct username and password.

State Restore: Saves and then restore state after session timeout and re-login.

Error Reporting: If this option is enabled under the Site tab (Debug), then using the drop down box, select the level or reporting required.
Options are System Default, None, Simple and Maximum.
- System Default - This turns Error reporting to the system default according to php.ini on the server.
- None - This turns off error reporting.
- Simple - This turns error reporting to simple options using the following options: error_reporting (E_ERROR|E_WARNING|E_PARSE)
- Maximum - This turns error reporting to the Maximum level using the following options: error_reporting (E_ALL)
Help Server: Type the path to the server providing your installation of Joomla! with your language help files. By default set to help.mamboserver.com for the English language.
Enable XML-RPC: Allows a remote client to connect to your site via XML-RPC.
File Creation: By default files created by the installation of components, modules and mambots inherit the server default permissions. By selecting CHMOD new files you can override the server permissions.
Directory Creation: As with files new directories will by default inherit the server default permissions. Select CHMOD new directories to override the server permissions.

## Database Settings

Warning: These are very important settings. If your Joomla! Web site has been installed on your behalf do not alter these settings.
Database type: Choose in this drop-down the type of database you are using.

Database Hostname: This is typically set to 'localhost'.

Database Username: Type the username used to access your Joomla! database.

Database Password: Type the password used to access your Joomla! database.

Database Name: Type the name of the database your Joomla! installation uses.

Database Prefix: Type the prefix used for records in your Joomla! database. Typically “mos_" by default.
Warning: DO NOT CHANGE UNLESS YOU HAVE A DATABASE BUILT USING TABLES WITH THE PREFIX YOU ARE SETTING!!
Database Zero Date: The date the database considers to be zero. Don't change if you don't know what you are doing...

## Locale Settings

Default country Locale: The country locale is defined within the [language].ini definition file. This setting is for fall back purpose only.
Language: Defines the default language used on your site. Choose among installed languages through the drop-down. Registered users may choose their default language by editing their details from the frontend if this setting is enabled (see User Tab). Managers and administrators may also choose a user-specific language for the administration interface.

Time Offset: Sets the time offset in hours between your server location and GMT (Greenwich Mean Time - UK). It will show the time chosen on the same line.

## Mail Settings

Mailer: Choose which mailer you wish to use: PHP mail function, Sendmail or SMTP Server.

Mail From: Type the e-mail address that will show as the sender.

From Name: Type the name that will show as the sender.

Sendmail Path: Type the absolute path to sendmail.

SMTP Auth: Select whether SMTP Authentication is required or not by your host.

SMTP User: If authentication is required and set above, enter your username.

SMTP Pass: If authentication is required and set above, enter your password.

SMTP Host: This is often set as localhost, but you may need to check this with your host.

## 3. Cache Settings

Caching will generally improve your site's performances.

Choose which type of elements you wish to cache.

Template Caching, Item Caching, Page caching.

Cache Folder: Enter the path to the folder or directory to store the cache files. This must be writable for this caching to be successfully implemented. Contact your Web Master if you have any difficulties. Default is mambo/cache.

Cache Time: This is the maximum length of time, in seconds, for a cache file to be stored before it is refreshed.