Customizing Browsertrix Deployment

Local and production deployments alike can be customized by modifying the chart/values.yaml Helm chart file or a local override. For more on using local overrides, see the Local Deployment Guide. The remainder of this guide covers some of the customization options available in the Helm chart.

Default Organization

The default_org setting is used to specify the name for the default organization created in a Browsertrix deployment. A slug will be auto-generated based on this value and can be modified in Org Settings within the application.

Superuser

The superuser setting is used to set the username and password for a deployment's superuser. If password is left blank, the application will auto-generate a secure password for the superuser.

Crawler Channels

The crawler_channels setting is used to specify the Crawler Release Channel option available to users via dropdown menus in workflows and browser profiles. Each crawler channel has an id and a Docker image tag. These channels are modifiable with the restriction that there must always be one channel with the id default. By default this is the only channel available on deployments:

crawler_channels:
  - id: default
    image: "docker.io/webrecorder/browsertrix-crawler:latest"

This can be extended with additional channels. For example, here is what the value would look like adding a new x.y.z release of Browsertrix Crawler with the id testing:

crawler_channels:
  - id: default
    image: "docker.io/webrecorder/browsertrix-crawler:latest"
  - id: testing
    image: "docker.io/webrecorder/browsertrix-crawler:x.y.z"

Storage

The storage setting is used to specify primary and replica storage for a Browsertrix deployment. All configured storage options must be S3-compatible buckets. At minimum, there must be one configured storage option, as can be seen in the default configuration:

storages:
  - name: "default"
    type: "s3"
    access_key: "ADMIN"
    secret_key: "PASSW0RD"
    bucket_name: *local_bucket_name

    endpoint_url: "http://local-minio.default:9000/"

It is possible to add one or more replica storage locations. If replica locations are enabled, all stored content in the application will be automatically replicated to each configured replica storage location in background jobs after being stored in the default primary storage. If replica locations are enabled, at least one must be set as the default replica location for primary backups. This is indicated with is_default_replica: True. If more than one storage location is configured, the primary storage must also be indicated with is_default_primary: True.

For example, here is what a storage configuration with two replica locations, one in another bucket on the same Minio S3 service as primary storage as well as another in an external S3 provider:

storages:
  - name: "default"
    type: "s3"
    access_key: "ADMIN"
    secret_key: "PASSW0RD"
    bucket_name: *local_bucket_name

    endpoint_url: "http://local-minio.default:9000/"
    is_default_primary: True

  - name: "replica-0"
    type: "s3"
    access_key: "ADMIN"
    secret_key: "PASSW0RD"
    bucket_name: "replica-0"

    endpoint_url: "http://local-minio.default:9000/"
    is_default_replica: True

  - name: "replica-1"
    type: "s3"
    access_key: "accesskey"
    secret_key: "secret"
    bucket_name: "replica-1"

    endpoint_url: "http://s3provider.example.com"

Horizontal Autoscaling

Browsertrix also includes support for horizontal auto-scaling for both the backend and frontend pods. The auto-scaling will start a new pod when memory/cpu utilization reaches the thresholds.

To use auto-scaling, the metrics-server cluster add-on is required. Many k8s provides include metrics server by default, others, like MicroK8S, make it available as an add-on.

To enable auto-scaling, set backend_max_replicas and/or frontend_max_replicas to a value >1.

backend_max_replicas: 2

frontend_max_replicas: 2

By default, the auto-scaling uses the following thresholds for deciding when to start a new pod can also be modified. The default values are:

backend_avg_cpu_threshold: 80

backend_avg_memory_threshold: 95

frontend_avg_cpu_threshold: 80

frontend_avg_memory_threshold: 95

Email / SMTP Server

Browsertrix sends user invitations, password resets, background job failure notifications, and other important messages via email. The email setting can be used to configure the SMTP server used to send emails. To avoid email messages from Browsertrix being flagged as spam, be sure to use the same domain for sender_email and reply_to_email.

Customizing Email Templates

It is also possible to custom the HTML/plain-text email templates that Browsertrix sends out with a custom --set-file parameter for email.templates.<TEMPLATE_NAME> pointing to an alternate template file. For example, to use a custom invite.html for the invite template, add:

helm upgrade --install btrix ... --set-file email.templates.invite=./invite.html

The list of available templates (and their default content) is available here

The format of the template file is, for HTML emails:

Subject
~~~
HTML Content
~~~
Text Content

or, for plain text emails:

Subject
~~~
Text

The ~~~ is used to separate the sections. If only two sections are provided, the email template is treated as plain text, if three, an HTML email with plain text fallback is sent.

Signing WACZ Files

Browsertrix has the ability to cryptographically sign WACZ files with Authsign. The signer setting can be used to enable this feature and configure Authsign.

Enable Open Registration

You can enable sign-ups by setting registration_enabled to "1". Once enabled, your users can register by visiting /sign-up.