Editing ArticleStrings - Plex Media Server on My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS

[harperho0]

Server Version#: 1.26.2.5797

Just brought a My Cloud EX2 Ultra and installed Plex Media Server on it. Pretty much everything is working great except I do not like how things are sorted. I went to this website: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201105343-advanced-hidden-server-settings/ and found out you can change that via ArticleStrings in preferences. On this website it does not detail how to alter this when Plex is installed on a NAS.

When I navigate to http://[My-IP]/:/prefs?X-Plex-Token=[My_Token] in a browser window I get a list of preferences. Within that xml output I see a:
<Setting id="ArticleStrings" label="Comma-separated list of strings considered articles when sorting titles. A server restart is required for a change to take effect." summary="" type="text" default="the,das,der,a,an,el,la" value="the,das,der,a,an,el,la" hidden="1" advanced="0" group=""/>

I then tried http://[My-IP]/:/prefs/set?ArticleStrings=&X-Plex-Token=[My-Token] as well as http://[My-IP]/:/prefs/set?ArticleStrings=das&X-Plex-Token=[My-Token] and both return a 404 Not Found error. Which seems to be the case no matter what I set ArticleStrings too. Are we not able to set this via the API?

I also tried http://[My-IP]/:/prefs?ArticleStrings=&X-Plex-Token=[My-Token] which just returns the preferences unchanged.

Maybe this is not possible via the browser?

I then decided to ssh into my NAS and navigated to plex_conf>Plex Media Server>Preferences.xml and opened it with vi. Some preferences were listed but the contents did not match what I see when I visit http://[My-IP]/:/prefs?X-Plex-Token=[My_Token]. ArticleStrings was not present in the file. Using vi, I added ArticleStrings=“” to the end of the file but nothing has changed. After this change I refreshed all the metadata on my library and still no change. When I go back into Preferences.xml via vi in the terminal the change is still there but nothing has changed when I visit http://[My-IP]/:/prefs?X-Plex-Token=[My_Token].

Does anyone who has worked with Plex a little longer than I have, have any thoughts? Maybe my syntax is off or are there more than one Preferences.xml files? Appreciate any help. Have spent way to many hours trying to figure this out on my own.

.harper

[harperho0]

Bumping this question. Does anyone have any clue on how to set ArticleStrings? Currently, Plex is stripping words like ‘The’ or ‘El’ from my sorting order and I would like to prevent that.

Any help would be appreciated.

.harper

[harperho0]

Actually, I was able to get this to work!

To get it to work:
First updated to the lastest version of the MyCloudEx2 firmware and the latest version of the Plex Media Server. Then ssh-ed into the NAS and used vi to edit the file located here: plex_conf>Plex Media Server>Preferences.xml. Then finally went back and toggled the Plex Media Server app off and then back on in the MyCloud settings and now the preference change is working.

Unsure if it was the updates or the rebooting of the server or app but I now have my desired ability to make changes. Hopefully this thread will help someone in the future to spend less time on it than I did.

[harperho0]

Also to further help folks out, I went back and made a slight change to the preference file and then viewed it in my browser. The change was not present. Went back in and toggled the Plex app off and back on again in the MyCloud settings and that resolved it. So looks like you might need to do that every time you make an edit in order to load the changes.