Chapter 5. Portals
5.1. Create a New Portal
Creating a new portal requires you to have a special permission that only an administrator can give you (if you are not an administrator).
- Click on Site in the toolbar, then click the Add New Portal button.
- This opens the Create New Portal window. Initially, the Portal Setting tab will be selected. On this tab, specify the following properties of the portal:
- Portal Name
- Enter the name of the new portal. This field is required and the value must be unique. The name must be between 3 and 30 characters and must begin with an alphabetical character or an underscore. Only alphabetical, numerical, dash and underscore characters are allowed.
- Label
- Enter a Label for the new portal. This field is optional.
- Description
- Enter a description of the portal. This field is optional.
- Locale
- Select the default display language for the portal.
- Skin
- Select a skin for a portal.
- Switch to the Properties tab and choose values of the following properties:
- Keep session alive
- This property determines session timeout behavior. Choose one of the following values:
- Never - The session will never timeout, even if an application requests it.
- On-demand - The session will timeout if an application requests it.
- Always - The session will time out after a set period.
- Show info bar by default
- If checked, portlets added to a page will show an information bar containing their name, a help drop-down menu and minimize/maximize buttons.
- Switch to the Permission Setting tab and set the permissions for the portal. Two types of permissions need to be set for a new portal; Access Permission and Edit Permission.
- Access Permission can be set to allow global access by checking the Make it Public box. Alternatively, specific permission for groups can be added by clicking Add Permission, then selecting a group in the left pane of the box and then a membership level in the right pane.
- Edit Permission requires specific permissions to be set. Click on Select Permission and choose a group and level as above.
- To use a template for your portal, switch to the Portal Templates tab. This tab lets you choose a template for the new portal from templates that are saved in the installation.
- Click Save to create the portal.
See Also:
5.2. Access a Portal
An administrator can access numerous portals running in the portal instance.
To access a portal, click on the Toolbar. The Site Management page opens, which shows a list of portals and possible actions:
5.3. Edit Portal Layout
To edit the layout of a portal, click the button beside the active portal:
New applications, containers or gadgets can be dragged from the Edit Inline Composer window (inset on the right of the screen) onto the main portal body.
Elements already in place in the portal body can be rearranged or removed as required. Use the relevant button in the overlay that appears when you mouse over each element:
Click the or buttons in the Edit Inline Composer window to save or discard your changes.
Note
For more information about creating and developing portlets see the following resources:
- Red Hat JBoss Developer Studio JBoss Portlet Tools User Guide.
- Red Hat JBoss Portal Development Guide (Portlet Development part).
5.4. Edit Portal Navigation
Click Site in the Toolbar and select the Edit Navigation link next to the portal to open the Navigation Management window.
The Navigation Management window allows the portal administrator to add new nodes or edit, copy, move, delete or clone existing nodes.
5.5. Edit Portal Properties
Portal properties such as language, skin and permissions can be set by clicking on Site in the Toolbar and selecting the Edit Portal's Config link for the portal you wish to edit:
The various tabs available in the edit properties window give access to the properties that can be edited for the chosen portal:
Click on Save or Cancel to either set or discard any changes you have made in the portal.
5.6. Delete a Portal
- To delete a portal click on the Delete icon beside the portal you no longer require.The confirmation message will appear:
- Click OK
5.7. Change Portal Skins
Skins are graphic styles used to provide an attractive user interface. Each skin has its own characteristics with different backgrounds, icons, and other visual elements.
There are two ways to change the portal skin, each offering differing effects on the user experience.
When you set skin using method one change is applied to this portal, and every user that accesses this portal will see it in the chosen skin.
When you change skin using method two, the skin is set for the logged in user and all portals within the domain will be shown with the chosen skin.
Portal skins set via method two have a higher priority when the portal is rendered.
- Method One
- Click on Site, then Edit Portal's Config.
- In the Portal Setting tab, select another skin Skin list
- Click Save to Finish.
- Method Two
- Mouse over the Start menu and click on Change Skin.
- Select a new skin from the Skin list. By clicking on the skin name a picture will appear in the preview pane.
- Click Apply to apply to the portal.
More information about adding skins to a portal can be found in the Reference Guide for Portal.
5.8. Switch Between Portals
Mouse over Site on the Toolbar for a list all portals in which you have at least access rights:
Users switch between portals by clicking on the desired portal. Please wait a few seconds for the change to take effect.
5.9. Manage Services
Users with administrator privileges can run service methods and properties directly from the portal interface, using the controls provided in the ++ interface.
Services Management presents methods and properties organized by the service class name. Controls in the interface allow users to pass parameters and run commands to call the methods and properties.
Follow Task: Call a Method in the Services Management Interface. and Task: Call a Property in the Services Management Interface. to learn how to call methods and properties related to the
org.exoplatform.portal.application.PortalStatistic classname. Adapt the procedures in these tasks to interact with other methods and properties for other portal classes available in the Services Management interface.
Task: Call a Method in the Services Management Interface.
Complete this task to call a method using the Services Management interface, which shows the average portal execution time in seconds.
- Click ++
- In the Services drop-down, select to display the available methods, including
getMaxTime. - In the Parameters column, type the name of the portal to query. For example, to perform the query using the default portal, type
classic. - In the Action column, click to display the execution time in the value group, underneath the Method table.
Task: Call a Property in the Services Management Interface.
Complete this task to call a property using the Services Management interface, which returns the identifiers of all known portals.
- Click ++
- In the Services drop-down, select to display the available methods on the Methods tab.
- Click the Properties tab to display all available properties for the service.
- In the Action column, click to display the name of all known portals, underneath the Properties table.