Instance settings

Admin › Instance settings decides what every account of the instance can use. Changes apply the next time each visitor loads the app; no restart, no redeploy.

Setting	Default	What it does
Social	off	Follows, friends, activity feed, shared lists and other people’s reviews.
Gamification	off	XP, levels, achievements and leaderboard.
Open registration	on	When off, only an invitation lets someone sign up.
Public API	on	Personal API keys and /api/v1. When off, the API answers api.disabled; existing keys are kept.
Free limit	60	Public API requests per minute and per account.
Premium limit	300	The same for premium accounts, once premium is offered.

A family instance often closes registration once everyone has an account, and leaves social on so lists can be shared.

Setting them from the environment

Each setting can also come from an environment variable in .env. A variable that is set wins: the admin page then shows the setting as locked (“Set by …”). Leave them commented out to manage everything from the page.

Setting	Variable
Social	SOCIAL_ENABLED
Gamification	GAMIFICATION_ENABLED
Open registration	REGISTRATION_ENABLED
Public API	PUBLIC_API_ENABLED
Free limit	API_RATE_LIMIT_FREE
Premium limit	API_RATE_LIMIT_PREMIUM

The first time the instance starts with this page, its values are taken from these variables. After that, remove a variable from .env to unlock its setting.