JA-SIG Home

About uPortal

Documentation

Getting Started

Developers

Implementors

Users

Background

Release

uPortal User Layout Management

Overview

This page describes how to customize the uPortal User layout. The User Layout is an XML document generated from the portal database. The user layout represents an abstraction of the structure of the content available to the end user. The user layout consists of folders (typically represented as tabs) and channels. While the end user has control of their personalized layout the uPortal implementor may also customize "default" user layouts for a group of users (for example, staff or students).The document describes how to customize default user layouts.

Customizing layouts for a group of users

The uPortal release has several groups for which default layouts may be customized. Those groups are:

      demo
      student
      staff
      faculty
      developer
      admin
      guest
      

A user id of the same name as each group has been set up in the database.. For example, the "student" user is a member of the "student" group and serves as a template for other students. Creating a default layout for all students is simply a matter of customizing the "student" user, primarily through the use of the Preferences channel.

For each of the users/groups listed above, login as that user then use the Preferences channel to add or remove folders (tabs), and add/remove/move channels.

Customizing the guest layout (the first page)

The guest user/group is unique in that it does not require a login/password to view the layout. It is the default user layout presentation which appears to anyone that has not yet authenticated through the portal, however most portal implementors would want to customize the guest layout as well. The guest layout is customized the same way as any other group through the Preferences channel but first the portal has to be set up so that the implementor can login as "guest".

The portal does not initially assign a password to the guest user so one needs to be added. This is accomplished using the md5passwd program.

Go to the uPortal build directory (uPortal_rel-2-1) and type:

ant md5passwd -Dusername=guest

The md5passwd program will prompt for a guest password. Enter in a password and the program will stored an encrypted version into the database. Now you can bring up the portal, log in as guest, and customize the guest users using the Preferences channel.

Note: The guest layout is cached so in order to see changes the servlet container must be restarted