General

This section allows the administrator to update the system settings of the In-portal platform.

• Web address – this field contains the full directory path where your In-portal system is located. That’s the text that comes after the domain name in the URL where your In-portal system will be running. Example: if the URL is http://www.in-portal.net/demo/, then the full path is ‘/demo/’. Please note, that the beginning and the trailing slashes are required. If you are able to log into the administrative console and see this section, this means that this setting is setup correctly and does not need changes.
• Website name – this field contains the visual name of your site – it will appear in the browser title bar on the front end, and in your administration panel. You can choose anything you would like here.
• Session Management Method – this field specifies the session management mode for your In-portal system. The ‘Query String’ method passes the session ID in all of the links on the site. This is the method, most compatible with the browsers, but it has a drawback – the session ID in the URL cannot be spidered by a search engine crawler. Therefore, if you want your site to be recognized by the search engines such as Google, MSN, etc. you will need to avoid this setting. The ‘Cookies’ setting is the most search-engine friendly setting, but it will work only for browsers enabled with cookies. If a visitor comes to your site without the ability to store cookies, they will not be able to log in, or use any advanced functionality with this setting. The ‘Automatic’ choice attempts to detect cookies and search engine spiders, and switch to the appropriate mode. Ideally, this would be the most convenient setting, however due to the unpublished search engine features, we cannot guarantee its accuracy.
• Session Inactivity Timeout (seconds) – this field contains your session expiration time. If a user (on the front-end or in the admin) is not active for longer then this period, they will be automatically logged out. This is an important security feature, and it is not recommended to change the session expiration to more than 3600 seconds (1 hour).
• Enable Tag Caching – this setting controls the template caching mechanism utilized by the In-portal system. It is an experimental feature that will cache the HTML of a dynamically generated page and use it for a preset period instead of re-generating it on the fly for every user. The advantage of this function is a tremendous reduction in the server load (especially the database server), and a great improvement of the site load speeds, given the same web server hardware and software. The disadvantage is that some users will see information that may not be completely up to date (it could be delayed for up to an hour). If you have any further questions about this feature, or if you are experiencing unusual results while using this feature, please contact our support through My Account section located at http://www.intechnic.com/myaccount.
• Use non-blocking socket mode – this setting is applicable only to the Link Validation tool in the In-link module, for the current version of the In-portal Platform. Different versions of PHP scripting language require different socket settings for the timeout detection to work properly. During the installation, In-portal platform attempts to detect this automatically and set this setting to its appropriate value. In very rare occasions, this setting will need to be modified. For more information, or if you are experiencing a problem with the Link Validation tool, please contact our support through My Account section located at http://www.intechnic.com/myaccount.
• SSL Full URL – secure URL of the site, including the full path to the front-end. Normally it would be the same as regular URL, but in some shared hosting environments it may look like ‘https://secure_domain_name/~username/in-portal’. Please test the SSL URL using your browser and make sure your site is accessible by this URL before entering it here.
• Require SSL for login & checkout - if checked, the system will redirect all users to the secure URL for login & checkout process (if the In-commerce module is installed).
• Redirect to HTTP when SSL is not required - if “Require SSL for login & checkout” is turned on, this setting will force the system to redirect users back to regular (not secure) URL for all pages that do not require SSL. If the setting is off, the users will continue browsing using the SSL URL even when it’s not required. This option is useful for performance tuning on busy websites.
• Time zone of the server – this setting controls the time zone your server is located in. This refers to the system time that your server will report to In-portal scripts. You can find out this information from your server administrator.
• Time zone of the site – this setting controls your time zone. This will determine what time zone you will see on all of the date/time stamps issued by the system.
• Mail Server Address - You need to fill out this field only if you are planning to use an external mail server for the outgoing mail generated by In-portal. Enter the full domain name of the mail server, without anything in front of if (e.g. “mail.mailserver.com”.) Leave it blank to use the default, built-in mail transport of your web server.
• Port (e.g. port 25) – this field contains the SMTP port of your external mail server. You need to fill out this field only if you are planning to use an external mail server for the outgoing mail generated by In-portal.
• Server Required Authentication – the field tells In-portal if your SMTP server requires a user name and a password to send mail through it (this is common on the newer mail systems). You need to fill out this field only if you are planning to use an external mail server for the outgoing mail generated by In-portal. In-portal currently supports plain text, cram-md5 and digest-md5 SMTP authentication schemes.
• Mail Server Username – this field contains the user name for your SMTP server. You need to fill out this field only if you are planning to use an external mail server for the outgoing mail generated by In-portal.
• Mail Server Password – this field contains the password for your SMTP server. You need to fill out this field only if you are planning to use an external mail server for the outgoing mail generated by In-portal.
• Send HTML email – this option will enable HTML email to be generated and sent by the In-portal system. You will also have an option to send plain text emails on individual basis, so it is recommended to leave the default setting – ‘On’.
• Additional Message Headers – this field contains additional email message headers that will be attached to all outgoing messages generated by In-portal. This is an advanced setting, and you need to know the exact formatting of the email headers to modify it.
• Messages from Site Admin are from – this field contains the email address that will appear as the FROM address on all automatically generated email messages. This should be a real email address to enable users to reply, and to receive failed message notifications. This field must be changed from its default value.