Server settings

Editing the settings that normally live in a file, plus connecting cloud storage — all without a file manager or SSH.

Sidebar → Server & Health → Server Settings

Owner-only

This screen is restricted to the main platform account. Group and branch admins cannot reach it, deliberately — it can take the whole platform offline.

The guided .env editor

.env holds the settings the application reads at startup: database details, mail, storage, keys. Editing it by hand means a file manager, hidden files, and no safety net if you mistype.

This screen edits it properly:

Grouped	Settings arranged by purpose instead of one long file
Validated	Values are checked before they are written
Atomic	The file is replaced in one step — never left half-written
Backed up	The previous version is kept as .env.backup
Nothing hidden	Settings the editor does not manage are still shown, read-only, so you can see everything that is there

Changing these can take the site offline

Wrong database details and the site stops instantly. That is not a bug — it is what the setting does.

Change one thing at a time, save, and reload the site before changing anything else.

"The .env file is not writable"

The web server needs permission to write it. Set the file to 644 and its folder to 755. On shared hosting this is done in the file manager's permissions dialog.

After changing anything

Settings are cached for speed, so a change may not appear immediately. Go to Server Health → Maintenance and press Clear Config Cache.

If you edit .env and nothing seems to happen, that is almost always why.

Connecting cloud storage

You can keep uploaded files on S3, Cloudflare R2 or Wasabi instead of the server's own disk.

Worth doing when:

• The server is running out of disk and you would rather not upgrade the plan
• You want files to survive the server itself
• You have many schools with many photos and documents

Not worth it when you have a handful of schools and plenty of disk. Local files are simpler and faster.

Private files stay private on cloud storage

Student documents and certificates are still served through the application with signed links, not as public URLs — the same protection as on local disk. Do not make the bucket public.

Moving existing files to the cloud

Connecting a bucket only changes where new files go. Existing ones stay where they are until you migrate them.

The migration runs in the background and can be resumed, so a large media folder does not need to complete in one go. The screen shows progress and what is left.

Do not delete local files until you have verified

After migrating, open the panel and check that photos, documents and certificates still load — from a few different schools, not just one.

Only once you are satisfied should local copies be removed. A migration that looks finished but silently skipped files is recoverable; deleting the originals first is not.

Common problems

What you see	Cause
".env is not writable"	Permissions — 644 on the file, 755 on the folder
Saved a setting, nothing changed	Config cache — clear it from Server Health
Site down right after saving	A wrong value. Restore .env.backup, or fix the value you just changed
Uploads work but files 404 after connecting cloud storage	Bucket credentials or region wrong, or the bucket does not exist
Migration seems stuck	It runs in the background in batches — check the progress figure rather than the clock