Portal Guide
CHAPTER 14
This chapter explains how to personalize your portal by creating personal pages, configuring content and layout, and applying themes. It covers the following topics:
The Portal Personalizer is a facility provided with the portal that allows you to create personal pages and customize your portal environment to show personalized content. All portal users can access the Portal Personalizer to perform the following tasks:
You can start the Portal Personalizer portlet directly in your browser or through the Portal Home Page.
To start the Portal Personalizer:
Choose one of these starting points:
The Portal Personalizer opens in your browser:
Now you are ready to create personal pages, assign default pages, apply themes, and create a wireless layout.
Any authenticated portal user can define a personal page. The process involves the following steps:
Create a new page using the Portal Personalizer, as described in Creating a personal page.
Add contentin the form of portletsto the page using the Content Selector portlet, as described in Adding content to a personal page.
Choose a portal layout, as described in Modifying the page layout.
Arrange the order and position of content on the selected layout using the Layout Selector portlet, as described in Arranging content on the personal page.
Display the new page right away, as described in Displaying a personal page.
Pages created with the Portal Personalizer are not tightly bound to portal layouts. That means users can switch layouts for their pages without disrupting the page contents. When the user applies a new layout to a page, any portlets that have been added to the page are automatically displayed using the new layout.
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
Enter a name for the page in the Page Name field and optionally enter a description in the Description field, as in this example:
Now you are ready to add content to the personal page. See Adding content to a personal page.
After creating a personal page, the next step is to add content by selecting portlets to place on the page. To add content, you access the Content Selector from the Portal Personalizer. You select from a list that includes prebuilt portlets supplied with exteNd Director along with any custom portlets you have created and registered.
To add content to a personal page:
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
Select a page from the personal pages list and click Choose Content.
If you want to display a specific category of available portlets, choose a category from the Filter dropdown menu.
Select one or more portlets from the list of Available Portlets.
TIP: Hold down the Control key to select multiple non-contiguous portlets from the list; use the Shift key to make multiple contiguous selections.
Click Add to move your choices to the list of Selected Portlets.
Now that you have chosen the content for your personal page, you can select a new layout as described in Modifying the page layout, or arrange the content on the current layout as described in Arranging content on the personal page.
When you modify the layout of an existing page, the Portal shifts existing contents to accommodate the new layout. Although the Portal makes its best guess on content placement, you may need to fine tune the end result. For example, if you were to change the layout from 3 Columns to 2 Columns, you would probably want to make some adjustments to get the desired presentation.
To modify the layout of a personal page:
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
Scroll through the choices and select the layout of interest.
After you have designated the content and layout for your personal page, you can position the content in the selected layout.
To arrange content on a personal page:
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
The Layout Selector opens in a new browser window:
The portlets that you have already added appear in the page layout. By default, portlets are added in top-to-bottom order within the first section.
If you want to add a portlet to the page, follow these steps:
If you want to display a specific category of available portlets, choose a category from the Filter dropdown menu.
Double click the portlet of interest from the list of Available Portlets.
The Content Selector window closes and the portlet you selected appears in the target layout frame in the Layout Selector window.
If you want to move a portlet to a different location in the layout, follow these browser-specific steps
For: |
Do this: |
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Internet Explorer |
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Netscape/Mozilla |
If you want to remove a portlet from the layout, follow these steps:
If you want to edit the preferences of a portlet, follow these steps:
Click Save Layout to save your changes and close the Layout Selector.
There are two ways to display a personal page:
This section describes each procedure.
To display a personal page using the Portal:
Select Portal from the Portal Personalizer, as shown below.
NOTE: To start the Portal Personalizer, see Starting the Portal Personalizer.
The personal page is displayed in the context of the container page. The Page Navigation portlet on the container page highlights the personal page or shared page that appears in the content area.
If the personal page is not displayed in the content area of the container page, click the link to the personal page in the Page Navigation portlet, as in this example:
As you can see, this container page displays the content of the shared page Corporate Home, shown highlighted in the page navigation links. Selecting the navigation link to MyPage will direct the Portal Aggregator to display the contents of that personal page instead. In the following example, the link to MyPage now appears highlighted in the Page Navigation portlet, and the contents of the personal pagethe Weather Service and Google portletsnow appears in the content area of the container page:
To display a page directly using the personal page URL:
Enter the following URL in your browser:
http://server/project context/portal/pg/up_personal page name
For example, if your server is localhost and your project context is MyWAR, you can access a personal page called MyPage by entering this URL in your browser:
http://localhost/MyWAR/portal/pg/up_MyPage
When you navigate to the personal page URL, the content of the personal page appears by itself in your browser. It does not include the container page, as shown in this example:
You can change the theme for your portal using the Portal Personalizer. The theme applies to all pagesuser, shared, and container pagesin your portal.
To set the theme for your portal:
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
Scroll down to the Portal Theme section and click Select another theme.
exteNd Director displays the Portal Themes page in a new browser window.
In the Portal Personalizer, you can designate a specific personal or shared page to be the default page for your portal. The page you designate is then displayed by the default Container page.
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
In the Portal Personalizer, you can specify a default container page to wrap all of your personal pages and a default page to display in the content area of your container page if no other page takes precedence. The Portal Aggregator uses these settings to determine what content to display for each user request, as described in How content is determined for the current user.
To set a default container page:
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
Scroll to the Container Page section and select a container page from the dropdown menu in the Default Container Page field.
NOTE: The dropdown menu shows only the container pages you are authorized to view.
Start the Portal Personalizer, as described in Starting the Portal Personalizer.
From the Portal Personalizer you can access the Wireless Layout Manager, which allows you to a define a layout page containing wireless-enabled portlets that you can use when accessing your portal application from a wireless device.
To learn how to create a wireless layout, see Using the Wireless Layout Manager.
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