Customizing Soapbox

Soapbox uses your own site's name and branding throughout the interface. This allows every Soapbox site to be different, and catered to a particular audience. Unlike Mastodon, which uses the "Mastodon" branding on all instances, Soapbox does not refer to itself in the user interface.

Backend settings

The site's name and description are configured in the backend itself. These are settings global to your website, and will also affect mobile apps and other frontends accessing your website.

• On Mastodon, you can change it through the admin interface.
• On Pleroma, it can be edited through AdminFE, or by editing config/prod.secret.exs on the server.

These settings are exposed through the API under GET /api/v1/instance.

Soapbox settings

Most settings are specific to your Soapbox installation and not the entire website. That includes the logo, default theme, and more.

• On Pleroma, admins can edit these settings directly from Soapbox. Just click "Soapbox config" in the sidebar, or navigate directly to /soapbox/config.
• On Mastodon, admins need to upload a JSON file with the settings, and make it available at https://yoursite.tld/instance/soapbox.json.

If using Pleroma, these settings are exposed through the API under GET /api/pleroma/frontend_configurations. Otherwise, the settings need to be uploaded manually and made available at GET /instance/soapbox.json.

About pages

It is possible to create arbitrary HTML pages under /about/:page on your website.

In your Soapbox installation directory (probably on your server), find the instance folder. For Pleroma, this will be located under /opt/pleroma/instance/static/instance. This directory contains files that are loaded on-demand by the browser, including about pages.

Just create a file like instance/about/hello.html on your server and it will become available under /about/hello on your instance. If you create a file called index.html, it will be treated as the root (available under /about), and you can create subfolders too.

For convenience, Soapbox ships with sample files under instance/about.example. Simply rename that directory to about and start editing!