diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 1a92600..6e39cff 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -28,10 +28,8 @@ To start a local DTS web service:
 
 ## Must
 
-* add a github action to generate static DTS from thornton corpus 
-* parametrise the DTS server
-* parametrise the SDTS generator
 * test the static generator with github
+* add a github action to generate static DTS from thornton corpus 
 
 ## Should
 
diff --git a/controllers/controller.js b/controllers/controller.js
index ed8fa97..d1db96e 100644
--- a/controllers/controller.js
+++ b/controllers/controller.js
@@ -4,12 +4,30 @@
 // TODO: use SaxonJS instead of DOMParser & XPath
 const SaxonJS = require("saxon-js");
 const fs = require("fs");
+const path = require("path");
 const DOMParser = require("@xmldom/xmldom").DOMParser;
-const settings = require("../settings.js");
+
+// read service settings from settings.js .
+// they can be overridden by a json file passed as the last argument
+function readSettings() {
+  let ret = require("../settings.js");
+  let path = process.argv[process.argv.length - 1]
+  if (path.endsWith(".json")) {
+    let content = fs.readFileSync(path)
+    ret = {
+      ...ret,
+      ...JSON.parse(content)
+    }
+  }
+  return ret  
+}
+const settings = readSettings()
+
 const XPath = require("xpath");
 const collectionRoot = settings.source;
 const Corpus = require("./corpus")
 const corpus = new Corpus(settings.source)
+
 corpus.buildAndSaveTree()
 // tei namespace
 const TEINS = "http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0";
@@ -208,28 +226,6 @@ var controllers = {
   },
 };
 
-// TODO: convert those functions into a class
-
-// async function getMetadataFromTEIFile(filePath) {
-//   let content = readFile(filePath);
-//   // optimisation: we extract the TEI header (so less xml to parse)
-//   let m = content.match(/^.*<\/teiHeader>/s);
-//   content = `${m[0]}</TEI>`;
-//   let doc = await SaxonJS.getResource({ text: content, type: "xml" });
-
-//   let ret = {
-//     title: "//teiHeader/fileDesc/titleStmt/title[1]/text()",
-//   };
-
-//   for (const [k, v] of Object.entries(ret)) {
-//     ret[k] = SaxonJS.XPath.evaluate(v, doc, {
-//       xpathDefaultNamespace: "http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0",
-//     }).data;
-//   }
-
-//   return ret;
-// }
-
 function getHTMLfromTEI(tei) {
   let ret = "";
 
diff --git a/controllers/corpus.js b/controllers/corpus.js
index 124613d..8a9a1c0 100644
--- a/controllers/corpus.js
+++ b/controllers/corpus.js
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 const SaxonJS = require("saxon-js");
 // const xpath = require('xpath')
 // const dom = require('xmldom').DOMParser
-const path = require("path");
 const fs = require("fs");
 const CorpusReader = require("./corpusReader")
 
diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index 28dcbb9..fc2c898 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "kdl-dts-server",
-  "version": "0.1.0",
+  "version": "0.2.0",
   "description": "Distributed Text Service (DTS) server from TEI files.",
   "/main": "server.js",
   "scripts": {
diff --git a/settings.js b/settings.js
index 36578f2..0e6ce23 100644
--- a/settings.js
+++ b/settings.js
@@ -1,8 +1,7 @@
 module.exports = {
-  // localPath: "../../texts",
-  // source: "tests/corpus",
+  source: "tests/corpus",
   // source: "https://github.com/kingsdigitallab/alice-thornton/tree/edition/texts",
-  source: "https://github.com/kingsdigitallab/kdl-dts-server/tree/main/tests/corpus",
+  // source: "https://github.com/kingsdigitallab/kdl-dts-server/tree/main/tests/corpus",
   // The stable and base of the URI for most ids (mainly collections & documents).
   // Only used for identifiction, it may not be accessible on the web.
   // https://api.github.com/repos/kingsdigitallab/alice-thornton/git/trees/edition?recursive=1
@@ -10,9 +9,13 @@ module.exports = {
   baseUri: "https://github.com/kingsdigitallab/kdl-dts-server/tests/",
   // TODO: read this from a collection.json file
   rootCollection: {
-    slug: "thornton-books",
-    title: "Alice Thornton's Books",
+    slug: "root",
+    title: "Root Collection",
   },
+  // rootCollection: {
+  //   slug: "thornton-books",
+  //   title: "Alice Thornton's Books",
+  // },
   services: {
     root: "/",
     collections: "/collections/",
diff --git a/tests/02-services.test.js b/tests/02-services.test.js
index bed6405..db7bef5 100644
--- a/tests/02-services.test.js
+++ b/tests/02-services.test.js
@@ -14,7 +14,6 @@ S test additional fields in the responses
 
 */
 
-
 describe('Unit testing the / route', function() {
 
   let collectionUrl = ''
diff --git a/tests/settings-test.json b/tests/settings-test.json
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..052b868
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/settings-test.json
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+{
+  "source": "https://github.com/kingsdigitallab/kdl-dts-server/tree/main/tests/corpus",
+  "baseUri": "https://github.com/kingsdigitallab/kdl-dts-server/tests/",
+  "rootCollection": {
+    "slug": "test-corpus",
+    "title": "Test Corpus"
+  }
+}