Configuration

UmbSocial reads its settings from the UmbSocial section of the site’s configuration (appsettings.json, environment variables or any other configuration source). Every setting is optional.

appsettings.json

"UmbHost": {
  "Social": {
    "Publishing": {
      "Enabled": true
    },
    "DispatchInterval": "00:00:30",
    "LicenseKey": "YOUR LICENCE KEY HERE"
  }
}

Setting	Type	Default	Use
UmbSocial:Publishing:Enabled	bool?	not set: on in Production only	Whether this environment sends posts to the networks.
UmbSocial:DispatchInterval	TimeSpan	00:00:30 (30 seconds)	How often Social looks for posts that are due.
UmbSocial:LicenseKey	string	empty (free edition)	The licence key of a paid edition. See Editions and licensing.

As environment variables, use double underscores: UmbSocial__Publishing__Enabled=true.

Settings that editors change, such as the posting schedule and its time zone, are kept in the database and changed in the backoffice, in Umbraco’s Settings section under Social. See Posting schedule and time zone.

Publishing on this environment

UmbSocial:Publishing:Enabled decides whether posts actually go out from this copy of the site:

Value	Posts are sent
not set	only when the site runs in the Production environment (IHostEnvironment.IsProduction())
true	always
false	never

Why it is off outside Production. Staging sites and developers’ machines are often restored from a copy of the live database. That copy holds the live channels and posts, and the Automate connections hold the live accounts’ credentials. Without this switch, a staging site would publish the live queue to the company’s real accounts as soon as it started. With it, a copy posts nothing unless someone switches it on on purpose.

While publishing is off:

• everything else works: posts can be written, scheduled, edited and deleted, and channels can be added;
• posts that fall due wait. They are not failed or skipped. If publishing is switched on later, posts that are already due go out at the next check;
• the free edition’s history sealing still runs.

Caution

To test publishing on a staging site, set UmbSocial:Publishing:Enabled to true there and point its channels at test accounts first. A copy of the live database still points at the live accounts.

This switch is a safety switch, not a licence: it is the same in every edition.

Which server sends posts

On a load-balanced site, only the server Umbraco chooses as the scheduling publisher (or a single server) looks for due posts, the same way Umbraco’s own recurring jobs work. Subscriber servers never send posts. Each due post is claimed with an optimistic concurrency check, so even if two servers looked at once, a post on a channel is sent by one of them only.

The first check runs 30 seconds after the site starts, then every DispatchInterval. Publish now saves the post as due now, so it goes out at the next check.