Basic Settings

Configuring the basic settings as an Administrator for your SeaSketch Project.

Basic Settings

This section is fairly self explanatory. The Project Name is what you entered when you created the project. This can be changed at any time. The Description can be anything you like and will appear under your project name on the Project Listings page, should you choose to list project there. (More on this under the section on Access Control Settings.)

You may upload a PNG logo with a transparent background of at least 128x128 pixels. This will appear in the top left hand corner of your project when in Project View (as apposed to Admin View) and may be linked to another website, such as your organization's website by providing a Logo Link URL. For example tthe University Logo shown below links to https://nceas.ucsb.edu.

Access Control Settings

You may choose to make your project Public, visible to Admins Only, or visible only to those who have been explicitly invited (by email or request). You may change these settings at any time. At first, for example, you may wish to make the project visible to Admins Only (the default setting) until you have configured your project suitable enough for an internal team to review it, then set it to "Invite Only" and invite a group of reviewers. Likewise, once it's ready for public viewing, you can switch access to "Public".

By default, your project is set to be publicly listed so that users can find it on our projects page without having to know the unique URL for your specific project. Note that a public listing does not necessarily mean that the public can access your project. For that, you need to switch the Access Control Settings to "Public".

Access Control Settings allow you to determine who can see and access your project as a whole. In other settings, you can limit who can see certain layers, sketch or participate in Forums by creating groups and group-specific permissions for each of these features.

Mapbox Access Tokens

SeaSketch uses maps created in Mapbox for what you might traditionally think of as "base maps", or those that appear beneath all of other map overlays. To get started, create an account in Mapbox, generate and publish a publicly viewable Mapbox style.

There are many ways to create Mapbox styles and integrate them with SeaSketch. We will provide more details on this in the future. Stay tuned.

Linking your SeaSketch account to your Mapbox account is a convenient way to ensure you can add maps to your planning tool and surveys.

Map Extent Settings

The default map extent is set here. This is the view of your project's map to a first-time user. For example, if you wish a first-time user to view your entire Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), draw a box around the approximate area of your EEZ.

The default extent you set here is for first-time users. Once a user changes the map extent in their own account, they will no longer view this extent each time they revisit your project.

Data Storage Location

This setting is set to reduce latency in loading map data. If you're project is based in Brazil, for example, you might want to set the data storage location to "São Paulo". Note that this feature is currently disabled so, for now, simply leave it set to the default, Oregon, USA.

This feature is currently disabled. For now, leave Data Storage Location set to Oregon, USA.

Language Support

SeaSketch can be configured to support one or more languages. Currently, the SeaSketch interface has been translated into 14 languages so, ostensibly, any given project could utilize 1 or as many as 14 languages. The translation work falls into 3 categories:

1. Language common to all SeaSketch project planning and survey tools.

2. Language common to all SeaSketch reports.

3. Custom content for any project (e.g., data layers, sketch classes, forums and reports).

The first two sets of terms and phrases are translated in a tool called POEditor. Anyone who wishes to help translate the Planning and Survey tool interfaces may visit https://poeditor.com/join/project/juloLqMZDP and select one or more languages to assist with. Anyone who wishes to help translate the report interface may visit https://poeditor.com/join/project/mHa2KSriVC. If you don't see a language that you'd like to use with SeaSketch, simply click "Suggest a new language" at the bottom of either page.

Even if a language has already been translated, you may find that some terms don't quite make sense as you start to use the term. This may be due to the fact that some terms were auto-translated with Google Translate or Microsoft Translate and, for a variety of reasons, they just don't sound quite right. You can use POEditor to recommend changes as you see fit.

The third set of terms and phrases (custom content for any project) are translated by project owners because they are unique to any given project. See the section on Language Support for more information on configuring your project with these unique terms.

If you want to change the language from the default English to some other language, or if you plan on adding additional languages to your project, simply toggle on/off the languages of your choice in the Basic Settings page:

For this project, I'm using both English and Portuguese. This is an ever growing list of supported languages. If you don't see one that you'd like to use, suggest one using POEditor.