Configure
Wiki ▸ Documentation ▸ Administrator Documentation ▸ Configure
Buoy has quite a few configuration options that allow you to configure the plugin just the way you like. This can be a little bit overwhelming at first, so this page describes what each option does.
ℹ️ Buoy configuration options are only accessible to Buoy Administrators. These options control how Buoy works for everyone using the Buoy, and are distinct from your own user options. To learn more about the options you can configure for your own user account, see User profile.
All of the options described here are accessed from the "Buoy" item under "Settings" in your WordPress Dashboard Menu (on the left-hand side of the screen). It looks like this:
When a user activates an alert on your Buoy, the first thing they'll see is the "Safety information" that you compose from Buoy's options screen. This setting allows you to inform people in your community about nearby services, relevant hotlines, or other resources that may be useful in a crisis. Exactly what you choose to put here will be up to you and may depend on a number of factors. For example:
- What kind of crisis situation do you expect most people who use your Buoy will be in?
- What resources for this kind of crisis exist in your region?
- What are the most immediately useful resources or suggestions you can offer to people in such a crisis?
Buoy ships with a default "Safety information" template designed for domestic, dating, and intimate partner violence survivors in the New Mexico, United States area. If the Buoy you are setting up is not intended for people in this area or facing this issue, you should change the "Safety Information" setting immediately after installing Buoy so that it is relevant to your community.
To change the "Safety Information" in Buoy, do this:
- Log in to your Buoy-enabled website with an administrator account.
- Click on Settings in the left-hand menu bar. The menu bar will expand to reveal various groups of settings you can alter to customize your website.
- Click on Buoy under the Settings sub-menu. This will take you to the Buoy Settings screen where you can customize various featuers of Buoy for your website.
- Edit the "Safety information" post so it provides relevant information for your community.
- Click Save changes at the bottom of the page.
You can double-check that your edits have been saved by accessing the "Safety information" under the "My Team" group in the left-hand menu bar.
The "Safety information" post is shown to every user who activates an alert on your Buoy, so it's important that what you write here is short and immediately helpful. Here are some suggestions for making sure your safety information post is useful to people in crisis:
- Whenever you mention web addresses of organizations, make sure they are clickable links.
- You can and should also turn phone numbers into clickable links.
⚠️ This feature is currently only available when Buoy is installed on a server running a POSIX-compatible operating system with a programmatically accessible systemcron; i.e., it is unavailable on Windows servers and some stricter hosting environments.ℹ️ "Timed Alerts" are also sometimes called "Scheduled Alerts" or "Safe Calls."
Buoy can optionally provide the ability to schedule a crisis alert for some time in the future, using a "Timed Alert" feature. When enabled, a new crisis alert button appears on the Activate Alert screen with the icon of a clock. Pressing this button will ask the user for information about when they want to issue an automated alert in addition to who they want to send it to, and what call for help they want to send. The alert will be sent to the user's chosen crisis response teams at the given time unless the user returns to Buoy and cancels the alert manually.
This feature is particularly useful for situations where a user is preparing to do something a little scary, such as going on a blind date, crossing a national border, or travels away from Internet access.
You are able to configure Buoy to keep (or discard) users' information in a variety of ways. When Buoy is deployed by a small social group who use it solely for peer support, it may make sense to shorten Buoy's default retention policies so that the information about users' last known location, alert details, and uploaded media are treated as ephemeral communication and kept around only as long as is necessary to respond to a crisis. However, a social services organization may have different obligations or objectives that require them to retain some or all data about a crisis situation for a certain length of time.
The Alert time to live setting tells Buoy how long to keep alert data before removing it. The default is set to 2 days, which means that alert information (an alerter's crisis message, team members' last known locations, etc.) are automatically deleted approximately 48 hours after the alert was activated.
⚠️ Buoy's automatic task scheduler depends on the WP-Cron system, which can only guarantee that a task is executed after a certain time, not exactly at a certain time. This is why, on low-traffic sites, you may notice that a task (such as clearing old alert data) doesn't happen exactly when you set it to.
If this option is enabled, any media that was associated with a crisis alert will also be deleted when the alert time to live has expired.
One of Buoy's core features is a shared, private chat room where responders can coordinate to prepare the most appropriate action. By default, Buoy provides its own rudimentary chat system out-of-the-box but, as a Buoy administrator, you can also choose to use an alternate chat room provider.
Currently, Buoy supports the following chat room providers in addition to its own built-in chat:
- Tlk.io - This chat system provides enhanced text-based chat.
Plugin developers can also replace or modify the Buoy chat system by creating custom Buoy chat systems.