Configuration

All of Penny's settings are on one screen: Penny → Settings, or Settings → Plugins → Penny. None of them are required, and the defaults are a sensible starting point for most sites.

Links and defaults

Setting	Default	What it does
Invite URL prefix	`penny`	The first part of the link you hand out, so links look like `https://example.com/penny/<key>`. Letters, numbers, hyphens, underscores and slashes.
Default expiry	14 days	How long a new invite lasts. You can change it on each invite. 0 means new invites have no deadline.
Default surface	Penny page	What What the link does starts as on a new invite: editing on the Penny page, or in the Control panel (Pro). View links are chosen on the invite itself.
Acting user	empty	Whose identity the Penny page borrows so that field inputs can render. Empty means whoever created the invite.

How the link works

The link in the email is a site URL, /<prefix>/<key>. It redirects to the page where the editing happens, which is served from your control panel URL at /<cpTrigger>/penny-invite/<key>. It has to be a control panel URL because Craft's field inputs need control panel assets to render, but the page has none of the control panel's navigation, so the recipient has nowhere else to go.

If a page on your site already lives at /penny, change the prefix. Leave it empty and Penny registers no site route at all, and hands out the control panel URL instead.

View links (Pro) are the exception to the redirect. They show a page on your site, and the browser that opens one has to be given a cookie by your site, so they are answered on the site at /<prefix>/<key> and never go to the control panel. With the prefix empty, a view link uses a site action URL instead, /actions/penny/view/index?key=<key> (with your own actionTrigger in place of actions).

The acting user

Field inputs such as element selects and asset uploads read the current user, and with no user at all they render empty or fail. So each request on the Penny page borrows one, in memory only. No session is written, no cookie is set, and the recipient's browser never holds a Craft login.

That identity does not decide what the recipient can change. The invite's scope does, and it is enforced when the content is saved. What the acting user does affect is what the inputs offer: a relation field lists what that user can see. If your invite authors have narrow permissions and a relation field comes up short, set an acting user with wider ones.

If the configured user is missing or suspended, Penny falls back to the invite's author, and then to the first active admin.

Control panel sessions (Pro)

Setting	Default	What it does
Session length	3600 seconds	How long a control panel session lasts before the recipient has to open the link again. Anything below 60 is treated as 60.
Delete the temporary account afterwards	on	On, the account is deleted once its invite is finished. Off, it is kept but suspended.

This surface creates a real Craft user for the duration. Craft Solo allows one user, so on Solo the control panel surface cannot work. Use the Penny page there.

View links (Pro)

Setting	Default	What it does
Viewing window	30 minutes	How long the browser that opened a view link can keep reloading the page. No other browser can see it at any point. Then it closes for good. The lowest value is 1.

The window starts when the recipient presses Open the page, not when the invite is created or sent. The invite's Expires date only decides how long the link can wait to be opened. See Usage.

Email

Setting	Default	What it does
Send the link when an invite is created	on	Pro. Emails the link to the recipient's address when the invite is created. Off, you copy the link and send it yourself.
Remind this many days before expiry	3	Pro. Used by `php craft penny/invites/remind`. 0 turns reminders off.
Notify on submission	empty	Who hears about a submission when the invite does not say. One address per line.

New invites start with the Notify on submission addresses from here, and you can change them per invite. Submission notices are sent on Pro only.

Emails go through Craft's own mailer, so they use whatever you set under Settings → Email.

The Penny page

Setting	Default	What it does
Accent colour	`#ED8228`	The colour of buttons and highlights on the Penny page and in the emails.
Logo	none	An image shown at the top of the Penny page.
Default heading	empty	Shown above the form. Empty uses "Could you fill this in?".

Housekeeping

Setting	Default	What it does
Keep the audit trail for	365 days	Older events are removed during Craft's garbage collection. 0 keeps them forever.
Failed attempts allowed per hour	20	Per IP address. Only wrong or malformed keys count. 0 turns the limit off.

A correct key never counts as a failed attempt, and it clears the counter for that address, so a recipient working through a long form is never locked out by their own visits.

Config file

Every setting can be overridden per environment in config/penny.php, the same as any Craft plugin:

<?php

return [
    'inviteUriPrefix' => 'content-request',
    'defaultExpiryDays' => 7,
    'defaultSurface' => 'hosted',
    'actingUserId' => null,
    'cpSessionDuration' => 3600,
    'deleteSessionUsers' => true,
    'viewWindowMinutes' => 30,
    'sendOnCreate' => true,
    'remindDaysBefore' => 3,
    'notifyEmails' => "editor@example.com\nsam@example.com",
    'keepEventsDays' => 365,
    'maxAttemptsPerHour' => 20,
    'accentColor' => '#ED8228',
    'logoAssetId' => null,
    'hostedHeading' => '',
];

defaultSurface is hosted (the Penny page) or cp (the control panel). It cannot be view: view links are picked per invite, or made with Share once. On Lite, leave it on hosted: an invite set to the control panel cannot be saved without Pro.

Permissions

Penny adds these under Settings → Users → [group or user] → Penny. Admins have all of them.

Permission	Lets them
View invites	See Penny → Invites and open an invite.
Create and edit invites	Make and change invites, re-issue a link and, on Pro, email a fresh one and use Share once.
Delete and revoke invites	Turn a link off, and delete an invite.
Approve submitted content	Publish content that was held for review (Pro).

The last three sit under View invites and need it.