TWiki Site-Level Preferences

This topic defines site-level settings that apply to all users and webs on this TWikiSite.

• • Set SITEMAPLIST = on
  • Set SITEMAPWHAT = Describe what this web does

• Copyright notice:

• Simplified Copyright notice for the WebRss feed (don't use any special characters, html tags, entities, wiki markup or WikiWords)
  • Set WEBRSSCOPYRIGHT = Copyright 2025 by contributing authors

• Warn if %INCLUDE{}% of topic fails: Fail silently if empty or off. Output warning message (defined in templates/oopsalerts.tmpl) if set to on. Otherwise output specific text (use $topic for topic). You can override this in web preferences, or by using a warn="..." parameter with %INCLUDE{}% :
  • Set INCLUDEWARNING = on

• Generated Table of Contents (TOC) settings
  • The first header level to appear in the TOC:
    • Set TOC_MIN_DEPTH =

• • • • If not set: included TOC is shown
      • Possible values: on or nothing

Default User Settings

NOTE: They are typically redefined in topics of individual TWikiUsers

• Preference for the editor, default is the WYSIWYG editor. The options are raw, wysiwyg:
  • Set EDITMETHOD = wysiwyg
  • #Set EDITMETHOD = raw

• Horizontal size of text edit box:
  • Set EDITBOXWIDTH = 70

• • NOTE: Keyword $name gets expanded to filename; $comment to comment; \t to tab (3 spaces for bullets).

<-- verbatim tag required to prevent error in Apache log; does not suppress Set -->

• Format of images when the link check box is checked:
  • NOTE: Keyword $name gets expanded to filename; $comment to comment; $width to width of image; $height to height of image; $size to width="..." height="..." attribute of img tag; \t to tab and \n to linefeed. Use 3 leading spaces for bullets.

TWiki Platform Settings

• TWiki site name:

• Maximum size of FileAttachments in KB, 0 for no limit:
  • Set ATTACHFILESIZELIMIT = 10000

• Broadcast message for skins supporting a %BROADCASTMESSAGE% at the top of the page: (IMPORTANT: Set to empty message if not used; #Comment out unused messages)
  • Set BROADCASTMESSAGE =
  • #Set BROADCASTMESSAGE = NOTE: Edit and Attach will be disabled today between 05:00 PM and 06:00 PM PDT (00:00 to 01:00 GMT) for a scheduled TWiki maintenance.

• Users or groups allowed to create new top-level webs: (ex: WebCreatorsGroup). If set to nothing, only administrators will be able to do this.
  • Set ALLOWROOTCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup

Search Settings

• Default type for search, one of: keyword (for search engine like syntax), regex (for RegularExpression search), or literal (for verbatim search)

• Stop words, e.g., common words and characters to exclude from a keyword search:
  • Set SEARCHSTOPWORDS = a, all, am, an, and, any, as, at, b, be, by, c, d, e, for, from, g, h, how, i, i'm, i.e., in, is, isn't, it, it's, its, j, k, l, m, n, o, of, on, or, p, q, r, s, t, that, that's, the, this, to, u, v, w, was, wasn't, what, what's, when, where, who, who's, will, with, x, y, z

E-mail Settings

• 'Mail this topic' mailto: link - can be included in topics, templates or skins

• 'Mail this topic' link text
  • Set MAILTHISTOPICTEXT = Send a link to this page

HTTP-EQUIV Settings

• NOTE: Changing cache behaviour with these settings should not be necessary and may cause cache-related problems (e.g. TWiki:Codev.BackFromPreviewLosesText or TWiki:Codev.RefreshEditPage). These settings do not affect proxy caches.

• http-equiv meta tags for preview script:
  • Set HTTP_EQUIV_ON_PREVIEW =

Skin Settings

• Skin overriding the default TWiki templates: (can be overwritten by WebPreferences and user preferences)

• Note: See TWikiSkinBrowser for currently installed skins

PatternSkin

• • Set TWIKILAYOUTURL = /pub/TWiki/PatternSkin/layout.css
  • Set TWIKISTYLEURL = /pub/TWiki/PatternSkin/style.css
  • Set TWIKICOLORSURL = /pub/TWiki/PatternSkin/colors.css

• • Set WEBHEADERART = /pub/TWiki/PatternSkin/TWiki_header.gif
  • #Set WEBHEADERBGCOLOR = #faf8f0

Skin Icons

• Topic containing the icon graphics library. Icons can easily be rendered with %ICON{name}%.
  • Set ICONTOPIC = TWikiDocGraphics, SiteDocGraphics

Legacy Support

• Support for legacy "EDITTOPIC", used to be hard-coded, now replaced by TMPL:P conditional instantiation
  • Set EDITURL = /bin/edit/TWiki/TWikiPreferences?t=1741867801
  • Set EDITTOPIC = Edit

Plugins Settings

• You can enable/disable Plugins using the configure interface.

• • Set X =
  • Set Y =

• Colored text: (see more StandardColors)

  You type:	%RED% red text %ENDCOLOR% and %GREEN% green text %ENDCOLOR%
  You get:	red text and green text

• • Set ENDCOLOR =

• Colored background: (see more StandardColors)    

  You type:	%REDBG% red background %ENDBG%	%GREENBG% green background %ENDBG%
  You get:	red background	green background

• • Set ENDBG =

Miscellaneous Settings

• Format of a NewWikiWord link:

Security Settings

• Only TWiki administrators are allowed to change this topic:

• Disable WYSIWYG editor for this preferences topic only:
  • Local TINYMCEPLUGIN_DISABLE = on

Creating New Preference Variables

You can introduce new VARIABLES and use them in your topics and templates. There is no need to change the TWiki engine (Perl scripts).

• The sequential order of the preference settings is significant. Define preferences that use other preferences FIRST. For example, set WEBCOPYRIGHT before WIKIWEBMASTER since the copyright notice uses the TWiki administrator e-mail address.
• In order to protect your custom variables from being overwritten when upgrading the TWiki.TWikiPreferences topic, it is recommended that custom variables are defined in Main.TWikiPreferences.

Protected System Settings

The following settings are declared final to protect them as read only. These are system variables that should

• Set FINALPREFERENCES = WEB, TOPIC

Related Topics

• WebPreferences has preferences of the TWiki web.