Global settings
About global settings
Global settings apply to your whole survey site: its name, the default theme, how emails are sent, security, languages, storage and more. You need the Settings & plugins permission to change them. The default values for survey settings are on a page of their own. See Default survey settings.
Change global settings
Click Global settings, the gear icon in the sidebar (1), or Configuration > Settings > Global in the top bar. Out of the box, only superadministrators see the icon.
Open the tab you need (2) and change the settings.
Click Save or Save and close (3). Nothing changes until you save.
In the picture: 1 Global settings in the sidebar, 2 the tabs, 3 Close, Save and close and Save, 4 Maintenance mode.
The tabs
| Tab | What you set there |
|---|---|
| Overview | Nothing. It counts the users, surveys, active surveys, deactivated result tables, and active and deactivated participant lists of your site. |
| General | Site name, default theme, example question group in new surveys, administration theme, default time zone, keys for IP Info DB, Google Maps, Google Analytics and Google Translate, character set for file import and export, maintenance mode, frontend cache, editor defaults and LimeSurvey branding in surveys. |
| Email settings | Sender address and name for system emails, email method, SMTP server, batch size and sending rate, test email. |
| Bounce settings | The address for bounced emails and how bounces are collected: LimeSurvey Cloud, IMAP or POP3. |
| Security | Survey preview for administrators only, HTML filtering, iframe and survey embedding, and brute-force protection for logins and for survey access. |
| User administration | Whether new administrators get an email, and its subject and text. |
| Presentation | Repeated headings in array questions, and the layout of PDF exports. |
| Data policy | The data policy and legal notice on the public survey list page. |
| Language | The default site language and the languages available for surveys. |
| Interfaces | The RemoteControl API: JSON-RPC or XML-RPC. |
| Storage | Recalculate the storage your files use, overwrite files with the same name, and the size limit for downloading the database. |
| Updates | The minimum stability of update notifications: Alpha, Beta, Release Candidate or Stable. |
| AI | Enable AI for this application turns the AI features on or off for the whole site. AI features are in beta and only available on the Expert plan. |
Settings you are most likely to change
Site name (General): the name of your survey site. The email to new administrators uses it as {SITENAME}.
Default theme (General): the theme surveys get unless their survey group or the survey itself sets another one. See Manage themes.
Maintenance mode (General): Soft lock lets participants finish surveys they have started, but lets no new participants in. Full lock stops everybody, even in the middle of a survey. Set it back to Off when you are done.
Email method (Email settings): LimeSurvey Cloud sends your survey emails through our mail servers. SMTP sends them through your own mail server: fill in SMTP host, SMTP username, SMTP password and SMTP encryption, save, and use Send test email to check. See Set up how your survey site sends email.
IFrame embedding allowed and Allow survey embedding (Security): needed if you show surveys inside your own website. See Embed your survey on a website.
Brute-force protection (Security): Maximum number of attempts and Lockout time in seconds limit failed logins, separately for administrators and for survey participation. IP allowlist excludes addresses from the check. Reset participant attempts makes a survey accessible again for participants who were locked out.
Send email to new user administrators (User administration): when on, a new administrator gets an email with their user name and a link to set a password. Edit the text under Admin creation email template.
Data policy and Legal notice (Data policy): texts shown on the public survey list page. For the privacy policy of one survey, see Add a privacy policy.
Calculate storage (Storage): recalculates the space your uploaded files take. See Check and free up your storage
Next steps
FAQ
How do I stop all surveys at once, for example during maintenance?
Set Maintenance mode on the General tab to Soft lock or Full lock and click Save. Set it back to Off afterwards.
I changed the default theme, but a survey still looks the same. Why?
The default theme only applies where nothing more specific is set. If the survey or its survey group has its own theme, that one wins. Change the theme in the survey under Settings > General. See General settings.
Where do I set my own language and editor preferences?
Those are personal settings. Click your user name at the top right. See Overview: Profile and personal settings.