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Site Settings

The Site Settings section covers the basic information for your site, such as name, theme, author details and SEO options. Each set of options is divided into a separate block to make it easy to distinguish between groups of settings. This section will look at each block, and the options inside them, starting with:

Basic Settings

The first block covers the most basic options required for your site; you would have already set these options when creating your site, but here they can be modified. The available options are:

  • Site Avatar - By clicking on an icon and color, you can customize your site's avatar. This avatar is used only in the Publii backend; it will not be seen on the live website.
  • Site Name - Set the name for your site. This is used in the Publii backend, the browser tab name when visiting your site, and the site logo (if it is set to text).
  • Language - Set the date language for your site (HTML lang attribute); other theme elements may be translated via a separate language file (see the Translate Theme section of this guide for more info).
  • Enable Spellchecker - Publii includes a spellchecker (OS spellchecker for MacOS and Hunspell on Windows and Linux) to help you catch errors as you write; when enabled, unknown words or acronyms will be underlined in red. Right-click on a word to see alternative spelling suggestions for the word. Toggle this option off to disable the spellchecker. On Windows and Linux the spell checker language is set based on the language of the site (see above), for MacOs is set automatically.
  • Current Theme - Sets the current theme for your site. New themes downloaded via the Publii Theme Marketplace and installed via the Themes section of the Three-Dot Menu will also appear here.

Advanced Options

Content's a big part of a website's success, but there's plenty of other areas that deserve attention. Publii includes a full set of advanced options covering SEO, social media and custom code to give you the power to fine-tune to your heart's content. To reach these options, click on the Site Settings option in the left-sidebar, then scroll down to the third group of options on the settings page:

Site Settings SEO

Let's look at the options in this section one-by-one.

SEO

SEO (Search-Engine Optimization) is a method for maximizing your search engine ranking; options in this area will help you better define your site for better search hits.

  • Noindex Website - When this option is enabled search engines are prevented from indexing your entire site; this will discourage your content appearing in searches.
  • Block GPTBot Bot - When enabled, this option prevents your site content from being indexed by GPTBot bot (used for crawling). Please note that it will only take effect if you do not use your own robots.txt file.
  • Block ChatGPT-User Bot - When enabled, this option prevents your site content from being indexed by ChatGPT-User bot (used in ChatGPT plugins). Please note that it will only take effect if you do not use your own robots.txt file.
  • Block Common Crawl Bots - When enabled, this option prevents your site content from being indexed by Common Crawl bots. Please note that it will only take effect if you do not use your own robots.txt file.

Implementing Access Control via robots.txt

When you enable the above bots option, Publii automatically configures the robots.txt file to reflect these choices. This seamless integration ensures that your preferences for bot access are implemented without the need for manual edits to the robots.txt file. For instance, enabling options to block GPTBot, ChatGPT-User bot, and Common Crawl bots results in Publii adding the corresponding disallow rules to the robots.txt file on your behalf.

Here is how Publii might configure the robots.txt file based on the settings you choose:

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: *

This automated process simplifies managing your site's visibility and interaction with various web crawlers, ensuring your SEO preferences are accurately implemented.

Creating a Custom robots.txt File

In scenarios requiring more tailored control over your site's indexing and bot interactions, Publii allows for creating a custom robots.txt file. This can be accomplished by generating a robots.txt file in the File Manager at the site's root directory. Opting for a custom robots.txt means that Publii will use this file over the automatically generated one, allowing you to specify exactly how bots should interact with your site.

Note: It's important to remember that with a custom robots.txt file, you are responsible for manually including any necessary rules to manage bot access. The automatic settings provided by Publii's interface will not apply, so careful consideration and configuration are required to ensure your site is indexed and accessed as intended.

Frontpage

  • Page Title - The page title, also called a Meta title, is used by search engines to match searches to your site better. The page title will also be used in search engine results rather than your frontpage URL or plain sitename, so you can control how your site is presented in Google, Yahoo etc...
  • Meta Description - Meta descriptions work alongside Page Titles to give search engines a clearer idea of what your frontpage content is about, and will be used in search engine results along with the page title to give a clearer overview of your site to users.
  • Meta Robots - These options tell search engines how to treat your frontpage content and are crucial for informing search engines how to process your frontpage content, as well as the tag and author pages. These directives are specified using the tag in the HTML header of a page. Here is an overview of commonly used directives:
    • index, follow: This combination instructs search engines to document the page and follow the links found on it. It's the default behavior, allowing full discovery and indexing of the page and its linked content.
    • index, nofollow: This directive tells search engines to document the page but not to follow any links on it. The page will be indexed, but links emanating from the page will not contribute to the discovery of additional content.
    • index, follow, noarchive: This trio combines instructing search engines to index the page, follow its links, and not store a cached copy of the page. It ensures the page and its links are discovered and indexed, while also preventing the display of cached versions in search results.
    • index, nofollow, noarchive: This combination tells search engines to index the page, not follow its links, and not store a cached copy. It's useful for ensuring the page appears in search results without aiding in link discovery or showing cached content.
    • noindex, follow: This pair directs search engines not to index the page but to follow its links. Although the page itself won't appear in search results, the links on the page can be used to discover additional content.
    • noindex, nofollow: This directive tells search engines neither to index the page nor follow its links. It's the most restrictive option, keeping the page and its links entirely out of the search engine's reach.
  • Disable Hompage Pagination Indexing - When enabled, files that created paginated content (that is, content that is spread over multiple separate pages) are not included in the sitemap and have both noindex and nofollow tags added, so search engines will not crawl and index them.
  • Disable Hompage Pagination  - When enabled, the homepage pagination will not be generated.

Post Page

  • Page Title - As with the Page Title for the frontpage, this provides search engines with a title for your post listing page to be displayed in search results.
  • Meta Description - Just like the Meta Description for the frontpage, this provides information about the content of your post pages for use in searches and search results.
  • Hide custom excerpts on post pages - If this option is enabled your post pages won't display text which is placed above the "Read more" element in the post editor.

Tags List Page

  • Page Title - As with the Page Title for the frontpage, this provides search engines with a title for your tags page to be displayed in search results.
  • Meta Description - Just like the Meta Description for the frontpage, this provides information about the content of your tags page for use in searches and search results.
  • Meta Robots - Sets whether tags page are indexed and links followed by search engines.

Note: The Tags Page is only available if your theme supports it. Otherwise, the settings for this page will not be available.

Tag Page

  • Page Title - As with the Page Title for the frontpage, this provides search engines with a title for your tag listing page to be displayed in search results.
  • Meta Description - Just like the Meta Description for the frontpage, this provides information about the content of your tag pages for use in searches and search results.
  • Meta Robots - Sets whether tag pages are indexed and links followed by search engines.
  • Display Tags w/o Posts - If enabled, any tags that do not have any posts assigned to them will still have their subpages created and will appear on the tag list on the website.
  • Disable Tags Pagination Indexing - As with the frontpage, if this option is active then paginated content links (content over multiple pages) will not be indexed or followed by search engine robots.
  • Disable Tags Pagination - If toggled on, pagination files will not be generated at all.

Author Page

  • Page Title - As with the Page Title for the frontpage, this provides search engines with a title for your author page to be displayed in search results.
  • Meta Description - Just like the Meta Description for the frontpage, this provides information about the content of your author pages for use in searches and search results.
  • Meta Robots - Sets whether the author page is indexed and links followed by search engines.
  • Display Authors w/o Posts - When this option is enabled authors created on your site that do not have any posts yet will still have subpages generated for them and will appear on the list of site authors.
  • Disable Authors Pagination Indexing - If enabled, pagination files (for content across multiple pages) will have the noindex and nofollow attributes added to them.
  • Disable Authors Pagination - If toggled on, pagination files will not be generated at all.

Error Page

  • Page Title - As with the Page Title for the frontpage, this provides search engines with a title for your error page to be displayed in search results.
  • Meta Description - Just like the Meta Description for the frontpage, this provides information about the content of your error page for use in searches and search results.
  • Meta Robots - Defines whether the error page is crawled and indexed by search engines; see the Frontpage Meta Robots option above for more information.

Search Page

  • Page Title - As with the Page Title for the frontpage, this provides search engines with a title for your search page to be displayed in search results.
  • Meta Description - Just like the Meta Description for the frontpage, this provides information about the content of your search page for use in searches and search results.
  • Meta Robots - Sets how search engine robots should treat your search page; whether it should be crawled and indexed or not.

URLs

URLs are the addresses used to visit your website, and Publii includes options to fine-tune the appearance and hierarchy of your URLs.

  • Use pretty URLs - When enabled site URLs will not display filenames such as .html in the URL.
  • Always add index.html in URLs - Use this option if you cannot enable loading index.html files by default when a directory on your server is opened.
  • Tag Prefix - Text entered here will appear before the tag slug in the URL of your tag pages e.g. www.yoursite.com/tag_prefix/tag_slug/.
  • Author Prefix - Text entered here will appear before the author slug on your author pages e.g. www.yoursite.com/author_prefix/author_slug/
  • Pagination Phrase - Text entered here will appear before page numbers when browsing to the second or later pages of post listings e.g. www.yoursite.com/pagination_phrase/2.
  • Error Page - Defines the name of your error page. Defaults to error.html.
  • Search Page - Defines the name of your search page. Defaults to search.html.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a list, usually in XML format, detailing the hierarchy of your site from the frontpage down. It can be used by both search engines and regular users so its worth having, and Publii can take care of it automatically. The options in this section are:

  • Create XML Sitemap - Ticking this will allow Publii to create a sitemap for your website.
  • Sitemap Content - Here you can decide which parts of your site you want included in the sitemap, with toggles covering Tag PagesAuthor PagesHomepage Pagination, and External Images. Enable or disable each section that applies as needed.
  • Excluded Files - If you wish to exclude specific files from the sitemap, you can add them in this field.

Open Graph

Despite the rather technical name, Open Graph Tags are simply a way to customize how your articles or page links will look like when shared on social networks like Facebook. It means your page links will be more informative and much more likely to get someone to click on the link. The options in this section are:

  • Generate Open Graph tags - Set whether Open Graph tags are generated or not; generally, you'll want to leave this active for improved social media sharing.
  • Fallback image - Click Choose file or drag and drop an image onto this field to set the fallback image; this is the image that will be used in social media previews if no other is available e.g. from the shared post. If left blank, the site logo will be used as a fallback by default.
  • Use the page title in metatags - If this option is enabled then the og:title and twitter:title metatags will use the page title as their value, rather than the post title, tag or author name.
  • Facebook App ID - This ID is required to enable Facebook's functionalities with Open Graph on your site; if you have not yet created an App ID, you may do so using Facebook's guide.

Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are very similar to Open Graph Tags in that they customize how your links will look when shared, but obviously Twitter Cards is specific to Twitter! The options in this section are:

  • Generate Twitter Cards - Enables or disables Twitter Cards for your site.
  • Twitter Username - Enter your Twitter Username in this section; it's required when generating the cards.
  • Card Types - You can choose between a standard card or one with a large image; both function exactly the same mechanically.

Privacy Settings

In this section of the guide we will cover the options available in the Privacy Settings section only; a full step-by-step guide to setting up the cookie banner and adding consent options for your site visitors is covered in a separate section of this guide; Publii GDPR Cookie Banner Configuration.

The Privacy Settings section controls the GDPR cookie popup, which is used to obtain consent from visitors to receive cookies. Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), visitors will need to consent individually to each type of cookie that collects personal information; for cookies that don't collect personal data a more general consent can be obtained. You can discover more about the GDPR and how to prepare your website for it in our guide to making your website GDPR-compliant on the Publii blog. For information on setting up the cookie banner, check the GDPR Cookie Banner Configuration article of this guide.

The options available in this section are:

Embed Video

  • Enable Privacy-Enhanced mode for YouTube videos - When this option is enabled, YouTube videos that are embedded in your post content will not be used by YouTube to customize your visitors' YouTube preferences such as recommended videos, nor will any personalized ads be shown.
  • Enable 'Do Not Track' mode for Vimeo videos - When this option is enabled, Vimeo videos embedded in your post content will not track any session data i.e. the player will not use cookies or track usage or other analytical statistics.

Cookie Banner

  • Cookie banner - When enabled, the cookie banner will appear on your site.

Once the banner is enabled, the following additional options will be appear to allow you to configure the popup:

Basic
  • Banner Title - Set the title that will appear at the top of the cookie banner.
  • Banner Message - Provide a description; this section should explain the type of cookies your website uses so that visitors can make an informed decision about consent.
  • Show Privacy Policy Link - When enabled, the cookie banner will include a link to your privacy policy page, informing visitors how their data will be used.
  • Privacy Policy Link label - Set the text that should be used for the Privacy Policy link in this field.
  • Privacy Policy Link Source - Sets whether the privacy policy link points to an internal or external URL.
  • Select Page - Only available if the Privacy Policy URL option is set to Internal. Sets which page the privacy policy link above points to; choose the page from the list, or type the name of the page into the field to filter results if you already have a lot of posts. The GDPR requires that any sites that collect personal data provide a privacy policy explaining which data is collected, why it is collected, and how it will be used and stored; we recommend creating the privacy policy page as a hidden post that will not appear in listings, but can be linked to in the cookie popup.
  • Enter External URL - Only available if the Privacy Policy URL option is set to External. Enter the URL for your privacy policy into this field.
  • Save button label - Sets the text for the save button in the cookie banner.
  • Show Reject Button - If enabled, a button allowing visitors to block all cookies with one click will be shown in the cookie banner.
  • Reject Button Label - Sets the text to be displayed on the reject button if it is enabled.
  • Open Banner by - Defines the type of trigger to open the cookie banner; this should be left as the default Badge for most users, but advanced users can define a Custom link (for example, to include this in a Privacy Policy article), or Badge & custom link to use both.
  • Badge label - Sets the title text of the badge, which will appear in the bottom corner of the window for visitors to click and open (used for the aria-label of the  badge icon)
  • Anchor link - Only available if the previous option is set to Custom link or Badge & custom link. Defines the link for the cookie settings.
  • Banner Position - Sets where on the page the cookie banner should display; can be set to Left, Right, Center, or Bar, which displays the banner as a bar along the bottom of the full-width of the screen.
Advanced

While the basic section covers the settings for the standard cookie banner, the advanced selection provides multiple options for fine-tuning the cookie banner, allowing visitors to manage which cookie types they wish to consent to. The options available in this section are:

  • Enable Advanced Cookies Configuration - Enabling this option adds the granular consent pop-up to the cookie banner, allowing visitors to specify which cookie groups they consent to receiving.
  • Advanced configuration link label - Sets the text for the link to the pop-up where visitors can manage their cookie preferences.
  • Pop-Up Title - Sets the title that appears at the top of the pop-up window.
  • Pop-Up Message - Add a message here to provide details regarding the available cookies and how visitors may give consent.Text entered here will appear directly under the title in the pop-up window.
  • Accept Button Label - Sets the text that will appear in the accept button in the pop-up; when visitors click on this button, it consents to all cookies.
  • Reject Button Label - Sets the text that will appear in the reject button in the pop-up. When visitors click on this button, it rejects all cookies.
  • Save Button Label - Sets the text for the save button in the pop-up. When visitors click on this button, it accepts only the selected cookie groups rather than accepting/rejecting all.
  • Privacy Policy Link - When enabled, a link to your site's privacy policy will be included in the pop-up. Note that if the 'Show privacy policy link' option in the basic settings is disabled, then this option will also be automatically disabled.
  • Enable Debug Mode - When enabled, the developer console will return a set of messages regarding the work of the banner or user consents.
  • Settings Version - Increasing the amount of this option tells the visitor's browser that consent for new cookies is required; this will show the cookie banner once again. This can be useful when, for example, a new feature has been added to your site that uses a new type of cookie, and visitors need to consent to these new cookies.
  • Store User's Consent Settings For X Days - The number in this option sets the number of days for which the visitor's consent settings should be stored in their browser. After this time expires, they will need to re-consent via the cookie banner. Setting this option to '0' will remove any time limit.

Google Consent Mode v2

This section is specifically designed for users aiming to integrate the Google Consent Mode version 2 into their websites.

This is particularly relevant for those utilizing Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, or any other Google services that process personal data requiring user consent. To comply with regulatory requirements, it is imperative to implement support for Google Consent Mode v2 by March 6, 2024. Failure to transmit consent signals after this deadline may result in these services ceasing to collect user data or collecting it in a restricted manner. Additionally, if you are already leveraging consent mechanisms for your tags in Google Tag Manager or plan to do so, you can seamlessly integrate Publii's cookie banner with this mechanism.

Activation

To enable Google Consent Mode v2 support, you must activate this option within the Privacy Settings. Additional settings related to defining the default consent state and how user-expressed consents for different cookie groups influence the consents within Google Consent Mode v2 will become available upon activation.

Default State

The "Default state" option sets the baseline consent state transmitted in the gtag('consent', 'default', ...) call. Here, you decide which consents are always granted by default and which require explicit user approval.

Following this, under the "Default state" option, you can specify which consents are granted upon acceptance of each cookie group. This involves selecting a predefined cookie group and marking the permissions granted upon acceptance of that group.

For instance, if the analytics cookie group is selected with analytics_storage and ad_storage options, upon acceptance, a signal is sent as follows:

gtag('consent', 'update', {
   'analytics_storage': 'granted',
   'ad_storage': 'granted'
});

Subsequently, on page refresh or the next visit, the analytics_storage and ad_storage options will be marked as granted in gtag('consent', 'default', ...) by default, regardless of the "Default state" settings, until consent is withdrawn for the analytics cookie group.

Revoking Consent

Note: Currently, when consent is withdrawn for a specific cookie group, gtag('consent', 'update', ...) signals with denied values are not sent. Instead, upon consent withdrawal, the page refreshes, and data collection ceases since a gtag('consent', 'default', ...) call with denied values for the withdrawn permissions is made. Future versions of Publii may consider sending such signals, considering scenarios where specific consents overlap across multiple cookie groups.

It's important to understand that if a permission is not marked for a cookie group, it does not imply that a denied signal will be sent upon gtag('consent', 'update', ...) calls. Only consents that are explicitly granted are transmitted. Therefore, in the example above, only two consents with granted values are sent, not a complete set of seven consents with granted/denied values. Essentially, consenting to a cookie group overwrites the consent state to granted for the permissions marked within that group.

Embed Content Consents

This section is dedicated to adding rules to allow visitors to consent to third-party cookies from embedded content providers, such as YouTube or Vimeo. Instead of displaying embedded content, such as a YouTube video, a placeholder will be displayed in its place with a message and a button confirming that you consent to a third-party cookie. The options in this section are:

  • Add Rule - Clicking this button will open additional options where you can specify the URLs of the embedded content that requires cookie consent.
  • URL Contains - Enter the URL for the embedded content that requires cookie consent into this field e.g. if you use embedded youtube videos, you can add youtube.com to this field.
  • Cookies Group - Sets which cookie group the visitor must consent to in order to view the embedded content. For that, select one of the available cookie group previously created in the Cookie groups section
  • Button Label - Sets the text for the accept button that will appear with the placeholder text should the visitor try to view embedded content without first consenting to the required cookies.
  • Consent Text - Text entered in this section will be displayed over the embedded content when a visitor has not consented to the appropriate cookies; it may be used to inform them of their requirement to consent before viewing the content.

Website Speed

Publii's static webpages are already blazing-fast at loading, but it's always nice to have a few more little options for those extra speed gains! The options here are:

  • Enable HTML Compression - Enabling this option will compress the HTML code used for your site; for the most part you'll be able to leave this enabled and reap the benefits, but if advanced users want to disable it, they can.
  • Enable CSS Compression - The same as above, but this time compressing the CSS code rather than the HTML. Leave this enabled if you're unsure, as it'll give a little boost to your load times.
  • Remove HTML Comments - If enabled, comments in HTML (which are not displayed on a live site, but are used to highlight or explain things to people reading the source code) will be removed during the compression process.
  • Enable Media Lazy Load - When enabled, the native lazy loading will be used to lazy loads images, videos and iframes.
  • Enable Responsive Images - If enabled, Publii will deliver different sized images at different screen resolutions depending on breakpoints defined through config.json
  • Version parameter - When enabled, the user's browser cache of your site will be marked to be refreshed whenever the site is updated. If enabled, this may generate more files to be uploaded on sync.
  • Responsive Images Quality - This option sets how much images should scale. That is, when a photo is shown on a smaller screen, how much should the quality be reduced, since on a smaller screen a lower quality won't be as noticeable and will reduce file size for faster loading. The default is set to 60%, but feel free to play around with this option and find the setting that works for you.

RSS/JSON Feed

RSS and JSON Feeds are a way for your content to be syndicated and shared far beyond your site, encouraging new users to visit. For many people web feeds like this are an important way of staying on top of new content, with JSON feeds being the latest development in this area. The options in this section are:

  • Enable RSS feed - When turned on, an RSS feed will be generated for your site.
  • Enable JSON feed - When enabled, a JSON feed will be generated for your site.
  • Feed title - Sets the title of your feed.
  • Show full text - If this option is enabled then your website articles sent via the feed will include the full text, so users won't be required to visit your site for the complete article.
  • Show only featured posts - When this option is enabled, the RSS feed will be generated with posts marked as featured.
  • Exclude featured posts - When this option is enabled, the RSS feed will be generated without posts marked as featured.
  • Number of posts in peed - Set how many articles people can access from the webfeed at once; default is set to 10.
  • Show featured image - When this option is enabled the Featured Image for each shared post will be included in the feed.

Posts Listing

The options in this section give you finer control over how your frontpage post ordering. The available options are:

  • Posts Order By - Set how the posts on the frontpage are ordered; choose from Post Creation DatePost TitlePost Modification Date, or Post ID.
  • Posts Ordering - Sets whether the posts follow ascending or descending order.
  • Featured Posts Order By - Sets the ordering style of featured posts on the frontpage; the same options are available as with the standard post ordering.
  • Featured Posts Ordering - Sets the ordering of featured posts to ascending or descending.
  • Hidden Posts Order By - Sets the ordering style of hidden posts in post listings.
  • Hidden Posts Ordering - Sets the ordering of hidden posts to ascending or descending.
  • Related Posts Selection Mechanism - Sets how Publii should find related posts; 
    • Use Only Titles will look for similiarities in other posts' titles to the current post. 
    • Use Only Tags will look for similarities in the tags used in other posts to the current post. 
    • Use Titles and Tags will combine both methods. 
  • Related Posts Ordering - Sets the ordering of related posts to ascending or descending by ID, or can be set to Random.
  • Related Posts Options - When enabled, related posts will be taken from all tags. When disabled, related posts will only be generated from the same tags as the current post.

Editors

This section contains elements that extend the capabilities of the editors.

  • WYSIWYG editor - this option defines which elements will remain in the edited text when the editor saves. You can use this to extend the returned HTML. The default rule set for this option is a combination of the HTML5 and HTML4 specifications.
    For example: adding v-select[*], v-dropdown[*] will extend the list of allowed tags with custom v-select and v-dropdown tags with any attributes.

    Remember: that in order to utilize this functionality, make sure to include the custom element within the initial window titled 'Additional valid elements in the WYSIWYG editor' using a wildcard selector v-select[*], v-dropdown[*] to identify potential values for the custom element. Then, in the subsequent section called 'Custom Elements available in the WYSIWYG Editor,' insert only the custom element v-select, v-dropdown. This extra step helps avoid accidental deletion of custom elements by the editor.

  • Code editor (CodeMirror) - disable or enable an auto-indent and specify the indent size for the CodeMirror HTML source code editor.

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