The Amber content authoring panel provides the site administrator a number of options that controls how Amber snapshots content and it presents snapshotted content to website visitors. These features are accessible from the WordPress panel (via "Settings -> Amber Settings").

Table of Contents Storage settings Backend options Local [Default] Perma.cc Internet Archive Amazon S3 Included post types Maximum file size Maximum disk usage Storage location Update strategy for snapshots Excluded URL patterns Excluded file formats Amber Delivery Available links Unavailable links Hover delay (seconds) Country Suggested Configuration Options Recommended defaults Volatile content availability Saving content as-is

Amber can store snapshots locally, in your WordPress website's storage space. If you prefer, you can store snapshots in an alternative backend. At this time, Amber can be easily configured to store snapshots using the following services: Perma.cc, the Internet Archive, and Amazon Web Services (Amazon S3).

By default, Amber will store all snapshots locally in your website's storage space. You can configure file size and disk usage limitations, customize the storage directory within your WordPress installation, and exclude particular URL patterns and file formats.

Users with a Perma.cc account may use the service to store snapshots. Perma.cc helps scholars, courts and others create web citation links that will never break. It is developed and maintained by the Harvard Law School Library in conjunction with university law libraries across the country and other organizations in the “forever” business.

If you have a Perma.cc account, you can generate an API key by visiting the Perma Dashboard (Settings > Tools).

Important Perma.cc restriction: By default, individual Perma.cc users are only allowed to preserve up to 10 records month. The ability to preserve unlimited links with Perma.cc only exists for users registered with a sponsoring library, academic journal, court, or other government organization. If you want to preserve unlimited records with Perma.cc, encourage your organization to sign up for free as a sponsoring library, academic journal, court, or government organization.

Amber can store snapshots directly in the Internet Archive, making them accessible immediately via the Wayback Machine. No special configuration or API key needed to store snapshots using the Internet Archive; if this backend is selected, you're good to go!

Users may configure an Amazon S3 account and to remotely store and manage snapshots. Visit Managing Access Keys for your AWS Account for instructions to generate an access key and secret access key. You also must establish an S3 Bucket where snapshots will be stored.

Unless you are an advanced user, we recommend leaving the default S3 Region setting as us-east-1. View the Amazon S3 endpoints table for more information on S3 regions.

What it does: Allows the preservation of snapshots from particular WordPress post types.

Configuration: By default, Amber will preserve links on all posts and pages. If you have created custom post types, you may select from these additional post types in the selection list.

What it does: Limits on file size prevent Amber from storing linked content that will require too much disk space, preventing any single linked URL's contents from occupying all of the disk space allocated to storing linked content.

Configuration: The default file size limit is 1000 kB, but you can increase or decrease this number to fit your needs. If your site often links to web pages that display lots of images or other large files, you may wish to increase this number. Alternatively, if your site links to web pages with minimal formatting and no images, you may want to decrease the file size limit.

If you are unsure as to the best file size limit for your website, you can gauge your needs by viewing the linked URLs that failed to snapshot (via "Tools -> Amber Dashboard -> Export list of preserved pages"). If you find that Amber has designated certain URLs as too large that you would have otherwise wished to store, you should increase the file size limit.

Alternatively, if you feel like your maximum file size may be too high and that you're preserving sites that are too large, you can visit Tools -> Amber Dashboard to see "Disk Space Used." If the amount of disk space used is too high, you can decrease the maximum file size to prevent the future storage of large files. Note that decreasing the max file size will have no effect on the existing stored files. There are two options to manually delete these files:

1. Visit "Tools -> Amber Dashboard -> Detail," hover over the selected file, and select the "Delete" option beside each individual file you wish to delete.
2. To delete all stored files at once, visit "Tools -> Amber Dashboard" and click "Delete all snapshots."

You can then re-store all linked content (with file sizes less than your new limit) by selecting "Scan content for links to preserve" and then "Preserve all new links."

Maximum file size configuration only applies to snapshots stored locally, and not to snapshots stored with the Internet Archive, Perma.cc, or Amazon S3 backends.

What it does: Limits the total amount of disk space that can be used for snapshots of linked websites.

Configuration: The default disk usage limit is also 1000 kB. If your website's content typically contains many outgoing links, you should increase the maximum disk usage. You can monitor your space usage from "Tools -> Amber Dashboard" and adjust the amount of space allocated accordingly.

What it does: Identifies the file path to the location where snapshots are stored on disk, relative to the uploads directory.

Configuration: A default path has been preset, but you may wish to store files at an alternate location. If the storage location is changed, all files are copied from the old location to the new one, and then removed. If the copy cannot complete successfully, an error message will be posted

What it does: Allows the user to determine whether or not snapshots of linked sites should be updated periodically. The default option is to update the snapshots periodically.

Configuration: Which snapshot update strategy you select is entirely up to your goals for the Amber module. For example, a fact checking organization's content may rely on a reference to the original snapshot of the site, in which case "Do not update" should be selected.

Updated snapshots will replace older snapshots, so disk space usage is not significantly impacted by which update strategy is selected. Note that if a site is initially up and later is taken down, the snapshot of the site will not be deleted.

What it does: Allows you to exclude particular websites or directories if needed, preventing Amber from preserving snapshots of these URLs.

Configuration: You may wish to exclude URLs that are reliably available (and therefore disk space used storing a snapshot of such sites would be wasted). You may also wish to exclude URLs that could pose security issues to site visitors, though excluding will only prevent Amber from storing snapshots, not from users accessing the site.

The easiest way to exclude URLs is by typing in the domain names of sites of which you do not wish to preserve. For example, typing www.example.com will exclude links to www.example.com and example.com, in addition to any subdomain (e.g. www.test.example.com) or subdirectory of that domain (e.g www.example.com/test).

Amber supports regular expressions. For example, you may choose to exclude the subdomains of a particular domain (e.g. .*example.com), or a particular subdirectory of a domain (e.g. www.example.com/test/*). We recommend https://regex101.com/ as a resource to generate and test syntax.

What it does: Provides the option to excluded certain file types.

Configuration: You may do this by listing the particular mime-types you would like to exclude. For example, to prevent Amber from storing links to PDF downloads, type "pdf" in excluded file type input field. You can use this feature to prevent Amber from taking a snapshot of various file types, ranging from PDFs to executable files, that may result in large files or that can endanger the safety of your visitors.

By default, Amber will automatically deliver your website visitors to the original linked site if that site is available. Of the three options for behavior, this interferes the least with normal user functionality. We strongly recommend using this option for the majority of cases.

However, if your site often serves links with unstable content (for example, if you often link to content that is frequently taken down or moved unreliably), then you may wish to select either of the two options, Hover or Pop-up.

All options for available site behavior:

None [Default]

No interaction will be displayed to your visitors, and they will not be presented with a snapshot even if one exists. As far as a visitor to your site knows, it will look like Amber isn’t even installed.

Hover

A small hover box will be displayed when your visitors mouse over any available link. If you select this option, keep in mind that nearly all outgoing links on your website will trigger a hover notification.

Link to Popup

A mid-sized popup window will be displayed when your visitors click on any available link. If displayed, visitors must interact with this window in order to proceed to the site.

Popups are typically intended to grab the user's full attention and to acknowledge the content present in them, in particular when critical confirmation from the user is required.

If you select this option, keep in mind that nearly all outgoing links on your website will trigger a popup when clicked. We do not recommend selecting this option, as in most cases it is too aggressive for your visitors.

Amber provides three options to determine how visitors to your site are presented with snapshots of unavailable links. The default option is "Hover," which results in a hovering box that appears as soon as the site visitor mouses over the unavailable link.

None

No interaction will be displayed to your visitors, and they will not be presented with a snapshot of a link even if one exists. As far as a visitor to your site knows, it will look like Amber isn’t even installed.

Hover [Default]

A small hover box will be displayed when your visitors mouse over an unavailable link. This is the default setting for unavailable sites.

Link to Popup

A mid-sized popup window will be displayed when your visitors click on an unavailable link. This popup will provide your visitors the option to view a preserved snapshot.

This is the most aggressive option. If displayed, visitors must interact with this window in order to proceed to the site. Popups are typically intended to grab the user's full attention and to acknowledge the content present in them, in particular when critical confirmation from the user is required.

Link to Snapshot

When a visitor clicks a link to an unavailable site, they will be sent directly to the snapshotted version. Selecting this option does not give the user a choice of whether or not to see the live site or the snapshot.

If you select "Hover" as your site behavior, you can specify the delay (in seconds) before the "Site Available" or "Site Unavailable" notification appears. This will result in a time delay between when a site visitor places their mouse over the link and when the hover box appears.

We recommend a very short hover delay, for example 0 seconds, if you would like unavailable pages to be readily available to your visitors. If you would like to make snapshots slightly more difficult for your visitors to discover, we recommend a longer hover delay, for example 3 seconds.

Amber also allows a site administrator to customize visitor behavior depending on the country from which the visitor’s browser originates. If country-specific behavior is enabled, Amber will collect information about site availability via a proxy within a certain country.

This functionality may be useful if many visitors to your website originate in countries with censored Internet. For example, if the site administrator is aware that certain linked content is often blocked in France but not in the United States, a proxy for France can be used to check site behavior in France.

If country-specific behavior is enabled, you have the option to also customize how notifications of site availability and unavailability appear to your visitors. This may be particularly useful if you expect visitors from particular countries who may want different levels of feedback about which sites are up or down. For example, if the site administrator is aware that certain linked content is often blocked in France, notification behavior for both available and unavailable sites can be set to link directly to the snapshot.

Amber will not necessarily snapshot all of the site blockages within the country, as this differs depending on Internet service providers and other causes.

Site administrators interested in using Amber just to maintain content are recommended to use default settings.

In the event that the site frequently links out to websites whose content’s availability is generally unpredictable and in flux—to the extent of damaging the user experience—then the site administrator may want to enable a more aggressive notification process. Changing the “Available links” and “Unavailable links” notification options from “None” and “Popup” to “Hover” and “Hover” respectively would provide the visitor more immediate information on site status.

Should the site administrator wish to serve linked sites as they appeared at the time of the initially linking, then the "Update strategy for snapshot" option should be set to “Do not update snapshots”. The option is accessible in the configuration panel. Moreover, the option for presenting “Available” site content should be either “Popup” or “Hover,” but not “None,” as visitors must have some way to access the original site snapshot.