A web portal, also known as a links page, presents information from diverse sources in a unified way. Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer other services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, databases and entertainment. Portals provide a way for enterprises to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether. Examples of public web portals are AOL, iGoogle, MSNBC, Netvibes, and Yahoo!.[1]

History

In the late 1990's the web portal was a hot commodity. After the proliferation of web browsers in the late-1990s many companies tried to build or acquire a portal, to have a piece of the Internet market. The web portal gained special attention because it was, for many users, the starting point of their web browser. Netscape became a part of America Online, the Walt Disney Company launched Go.com, and Excite and @Home became a part of AT&T during the late 1990s. Lycos was said to be a good target for other media companies such as CBS.

The portal craze, with "old media" companies racing to outbid each other for Internet properties, died down with the dot-com flameout in 2000 and 2001. Disney pulled the plug on Go.com, Excite went bankrupt and its remains were sold to iWon.com. Some portal sites such as Yahoo! and those others first listed in this article remain successful.

Types of portals

[edit] Horizontal vs. vertical portal

Two broad categorizations of portals are horizontal portals, which cover many areas, and vertical portals, which are focused on one functional area. Another definition for a horizontal portal is, that it is used as a platform to several companies in the same economic sector or to the same type of manufacturers or distributors.[2] A vertical portal consequently is a specialized entry point to a specific market or industry niche, subject area, or interest, also called vortal.[3]

[edit] Personal portals

A personal portal is a site on the World Wide Web that typically provides personalized capabilities to its visitors, providing a pathway to other content. It is designed to use distributed applications, different numbers and types of middleware and hardware to provide services from a number of different sources. In addition, business portals are designed to share collaboration in workplaces. A further business-driven requirement of portals is that the content be able to work on multiple platforms such as personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and cell phones/mobile phones. Information, news, and updates are examples of content that would be delivered through such a portal. Personal portals can be related to any specific topic such as providing friend information on a social network or providing links to outside content that may help others beyond your reach of services. Portals are not limited to simply providing links.

Information or content that you are putting on the internet creates a portal, or a path to new knowledge and/or capabilities.

[edit] Regional web portals

Along with the development and success of international personal portals such as Yahoo!, regional variants have also sprung up. Some regional portals contain local information such as weather forecasts, street maps and local business information. Another notable expansion over the past couple of years is the move into formerly unthinkable markets.

"Local content - global reach" portals have emerged not only from countries like Korea (Naver), India (Rediff), China (Sina.com), Romania, Greece (in.gr) and Italy, but in countries like Vietnam where they are very important for learning how to apply e-commerce, e-government, etc. Such portals reach out to the widespread diaspora across the world.

[edit] Government web portals

At the end of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, many governments had already committed to creating portal sites for their citizens. In the United States the main portal is USA.gov in English and GobiernoUSA.gov in Spanish in addition to portals developed for specific audiences such as Disability.gov; in the United Kingdom the main portals are Directgov (for citizens) and businesslink.gov.uk (for businesses).The official web portal of the European Union is Europa (web portal). Europa links to all EU agencies and institutions in addition to press releases and audiovisual content from press conferences.All relevant health topics from across Europe are gathered in the Health-EU portal.

[edit] Corporate web portals

Corporate intranets became common during the 1990s. As intranets grew in size and complexity, webmasters were faced with increasing content and user management challenges. A consolidated view of company information was judged insufficient; users wanted personalization and customization. Webmasters, if skilled enough, were able to offer some capabilities, but for the most part ended up driving users away from using the intranet.

Many companies began to offer tools to help webmasters manage their data, applications and information more easily, and through personalized views. Portal solutions can also include workflow management, collaboration between work groups, and policy-managed content publication. Most can allow internal and external access to specific corporate information using secure authentication or single sign-on.

JSR168 Standards emerged around 2001. Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 standards allow the interoperability of portlets across different portal platforms. These standards allow portal developers, administrators and consumers to integrate standards-based portals and portlets across a variety of vendor solutions.

The concept of content aggregation seems to still gain momentum and portal solution will likely continue to evolve significantly over the next few years. The Gartner Group predicts generation 8 portals to expand on the Business Mashups concept of delivering a variety of information, tools, applications and access points through a single mechanism.[citation needed]

With the increase in user generated content, disparate data silos, and file formats, information architects and taxonomist will be required to allow users the ability to tag (classify) the data. This will ultimately cause a ripple effect where users will also be generating ad hoc navigation and information flows.

Corporate Portals also offer customers & employees self-service opportunities.

[edit] Stock Portals

Also known as Stock-share Portals, Stock market portals or Stock exchange portals are Web-based applications that facilitates the process of informing the share-holders with substantial online data such as the latest price, ask/bids, the latest News, reports and announcements. Some stock portals use online gateways through a central depository system (CDS) for the visitors to buy or sell their shares or manage their portfolio (finance).

[edit] Tender's Portals

It stands for a gate way to achieve data on tenders and professional processing of continuous online tenders. With a tender portal the complete tendering process– submitting of proposals, assessment, administration – will be done on the web. Electronic or Online Tendering is just carrying out the same traditional tendering process in an electronic form, using the Internet.

Using Online Tendering, the Bidders can :

• Receive notification of the tenders• Receive tender documents online• Fill out the forms online• Submit proposals and documents• Submit Bids Online

[edit] Hosted web portals

As corporate portals gained popularity a number of companies began offering them as a hosted service. The hosted portal market fundamentally changed the composition of portals. In many ways they served simply as a tool for publishing information instead of the loftier goals of integrating legacy applications or presenting correlated data from distributed databases. The early hosted portal companies such as Hyperoffice.com or the now defunct InternetPortal.com focused on collaboration and scheduling in addition to the distribution of corporate data. As hosted web portals have risen in popularity their feature set has grown to include hosted

databases, document management, email, discussion forums and more. Hosted portals automatically personalize the content generated from their modules to provide a personalized experience to their users. In this regard they have remained true to the original goals of the earlier corporate web portals. Emerging new classes of internet portals called Cloud Portals are showcasing the power of API (Application Programming Ineterface) rich software systems leveraging SOA (service oriented architecture, web services, and custom data exchange) to accommodate machine to machine interaction creating a more fluid user experience for connecting users spanning multiple domains during a given "session". eg: Nubifer.com's Cloud Portal.

[edit] Domain-specific portals

A number of portals have come about that are specific to the particular domain, offering access to related companies and services, a prime example of this trend would be the growth in property portals that give access to services such as estate agents, removal firm, and solicitors that offer conveyancing. Along the same lines, industry-specific news and information portals have appeared, such as the clinical trials specific portal: IFPMA Clinical Trials Portal

[edit] Engineering Aspects

The "portal" concept is to present the user with a single web page that brings together or aggregates content from a number of other systems or servers. For portals that present application functionality to the user, the portal server is in reality the front piece of a server configuration that includes some connectivity to the application server. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one example of how a portal can be used to deliver application server content and functionality. The application server or architecture performs the actual functions of the application. This application server is in turn connected to database servers, and may be part of a clustered server environment. High-capacity portal configurations may include load balancing equipment. SOAP, an xml-based protocol, may be used for servers to communicate within this architecture.

The server hosting the portal may only be a "pass through" for the user. By use of portlets, application functionality can be presented in any number of portal pages. For the most part, this architecture is transparent to the user.

In such a scheme, security and capacity can be important features, and administrators need to ensure that only an authorized visitor or user can generate requests to the application server. If administration does not ensure this aspect, then the portal may inadvertently present vulnerabilities to various types of attacks. [see also articles on SOAP and SOA]

What is a Portal?

In the world of science and space, a 'portal' is considered to be a two-way interdimensional door opening into

several realities, including the astral world; the far reaches of physical, interstellar space; and alternate, parallel

universes (source www.earthportals.com/portal.html by Claire Watson) If you are a 'Star Trek' or 'Stargate' fan

of course this is something that you will have known for years.

To a certain degree, the IT world has high jacked the definition of a true portal and translated it into its own

interpretation - but the principle of what a portal is stays the same.

What is the IT definition of a Portal?

In the IT World - a portal is used to describe a browser experience that has an entry point (or gateway) that is

intended to be the starting point for any journey or user experience. As such in IT - a portal can be described as

an 'anchor' or starting point that makes all the types of information (destinations) available to a designated

audience by passing through the one point.

Within IT, a number of attempts have been made to classify portals - as they are significantly different in the

way they split, each will be explored separately.

Definition 1: Information Portals vs Content Management Portals

In many organisations, it is not a case of choosing between one type or the other - and often both types are

combined and deployed together in order to meet business needs.

Information Portals

These types of portal (also called Vertical Enterprise Portals - or Enterprise Information Portals) can be

essentially seen as consolidating many different types of information from a multitude of sources onto a single

screen or user experience. People who use an Information Portal typically are not or do not publish to it - or put

another way - they are the consumers of the information prepared and published by others.

A typical Information Portal being used within a corporation or company might contain some of the following;

Local Weather, News, Share Price information taken from content feeds such as RSS, XML.

Access to email client, calendars, meeting room bookings, centrally stored documents and assets - or any

type of central business application where viewing of items is required.

Corporate information such as HR, events, programs, or any other cross company information.

Reports - or forms that allow information to be requested - to assist with business choices.

Access to smaller information portals that are not maintained centrally but have an access point via the

primary information portal.

Portals can be a 'static' experience, in that the same interface can be provided as a starting point to all users -

or they can be and are frequently personalised. For a more detailed explanation of how they can be

personalised please view What is Personalisation? - but in essence personalisation allows a portal gateway or

window to be modified so that the information presented to a user is tailored to their profile, chosen interests or

clicking behaviour.

Content Management Portals

These types of portal are designed to improve the access to and sharing of information stored within an

organisation. In a content management portal, self-service publishing features allow end users to post and

share any kind of document, digital asset, record or Web content with other users, even those geographically

dispersed (portals of this kind tend to be browser based to allow for access to be from anywhere an internet

connection exists).

For example, consider a global software company consisting of developers, product managers, marketing,

sales all working at locations across the world. Each has information they need to share with members local to

themselves (both in terms of geographic location and also in terms of job function) as well as with others

outside of these groups. In a Content Management Portal, most users will have the ability to add information to

the portal and some users will have rights or authorisations to modify, delete, expire information produced by

others.

Whereas an Information Portal is essentially a 'read only' experience - with a Content Management Portal

users are able to publish, read, retrieve, modify, archive and delete content or information within the portal

'window'.

A typical Content Management Portal being used within a corporation or company might contain some of the

following;

the ability to check-in and check-out information which is 'in progress', so that users cannot overwrite each

others changes - this capability is found in WCMS, DMS, RMS, DAM solutions all of which can reside within

the window of a Content Management Portal.

Version control and Audit trail, so that successive versions of a particular item can be retained or overwritten

and a track of who did what can be reported on - all features that are found within WCMS, DMS, DAM and

RMS products as above.

A security mechanism, so that content can be protected from unauthorized view or manipulation - common

to DMS, RMS, WCMS, DAM and Personalisation environments - all of which can be implemented within a

portal gateway.

Workflow, which establishes a process through which a document or request flows among users

Definition 2: Application Centric Portals vs Content Centric Portals

Another way of viewing Portals dispenses with the idea of Information and Content as a distinction and looks at

it as Application Centric or Content Centric;

Application Centric Portals

This type of portal definition sees the function as one of tying together back-end systems to support users'

application driven business processes. Users could be viewing the information as read only or able to create,

modify, delete, expire information based on rights and permissions - but they are essentially using the portal to

'glue' together a number of applications into one view - so that rather than having to open a number of different

applications to drive their business processes they are able to access them all from one point.

Content Centric Portals

This type of portal definition sees the function as one of obtaining information from a wide variety of sources

and displaying that content to users in a way that is based upon users' roles and segmented information needs.

In order to achieve this type of portal delivery, a personalisation engine is often needed which is either intrinsic

to the portal software - or an additional layer of software to compliment the portal tool. As with any type of

'personalised' experience - it can be extremely powerful if properly conducted, but have a worse impact than

doing nothing if the business logic and profiles that are used to make the portal content centric are incorrect

and/or delivering inappropriate information.

A content centric portal that is pulling in information from business applications such as WCMS, DMS, DAM,

RMS and standard Desktop applications - and on the fly determining the most appropriate information to make

available based on implicit and explicit personalisation rules is arguably the utopia of what can be done with

portal technology. This usually requires that all aspects that are being pulled into the gateway are based on

open standards to allow the content to be delivered as a service without requiring extensive bespoke

programming. A customer is more likely to find a default capability of this nature with ECMS vendors, given that

they are in a position to want their products to work in this manner - and for other vendors to want to integrate

with their products in the same way.

Definition 3: Vertical Enterprise Portals vs Horizontal Enterprise Portals

A lot of what is contained within a VEP or HEP has already been covered in the previous two definitions - but

depending on your gateway you are intending to portalise it could be that this is a more appropriate way of

seeing the user experience. Unlike the other definitions, the Vertical or Horizontal Enterprise Portal does not

seek to determine what or how the content is being managed that is making up the user experience - but sees

the portals as meeting a niche experience - or meeting a very wide audience.

Vertical Enterprise Portals

Examples of this type of user experience would be MP3.com, pets.com or any other similar site where the

portal or gateway is specific to an industry vertical or sector.

Horizontal Enterprise Portals

Examples of this type of user experience would be the Yahoo, AOL.com. They are also sometimes referred to

as Mega Portals.

Conclusion

All the above definitions have 'merits' when it comes to explaining what a portal is. If you are reading this article

from a point of view of educating yourself as to what a portal can be, then it would be prudent to digest each

definition and then look at your own requirements and ascertain whether one or more is more appropriate - or

in fact a mixture of the definitions. For example, you may be aiming to create a vertical portal in that you are

serving a niche sector of a market - but you may determine that you wish to make it content centric and include

profiles to enhance the user experience - and you may or may not decide that users will be able to read

information only (making it an Information type of portal) or you may elect to allow them to collaborate on

content depending on the nature of the portal.

Whatever you decide your portal is to be make sure your vendor understands your definition and does not

answer assuming their own interpretation.

What is a Portal?

Since the dawn of the World Wide Web users have been accessing one Web page at a time. At first, excitement over the ability to provide platform-agnostic content to all users with network access or an Internet connection overshadowed any drawbacks or inadequacies with the new technology. Later, emerging technologies such as Java, JavaScript, and application servers provided application functionality, usability, stability, and performance improvements that have been the mainstay of Internet computing.

Now organizations need more. They want to not only surface their legacy applications, processes, and data in a Web interface, but they want to be able to do so more than one page at a time. They want portals.

A portal is a powerful Web site that gives users a single point of access to applications and information in a unified interface.

A portal lets users view each application or Web page in its own window, called a portlet, and a single browser window can contain multiple portlets. For example, a portal page can contain portlets for logging in, searching, displaying news feeds, and managing appointments with a calendar application, as shown in Figure   1 .

Figure 1 Portal desktop

 

Portlets are arranged on portal pages, and users can easily navigate among pages with page tabs, drop-down menus, or other mechanisms to access the portlets they want. The portal in Figure   1

contains three pages: Home, My Workspace, and HR, whose links appear just above the Login portlet.

 

WebLogic Portal

WebLogic Portal's flexible, powerful framework lets you create portal interfaces independently of your application logic or Web pages, and through the portal development tools available in WebLogic Workshop, you can surface the applications and Web services you develop seamlessly and easily in your portal interfaces.

In addition, WebLogic Portal's framework, lifecycle management tools, and business services let you quickly build and assemble portals that provide employees, partners, and customers with audience-specific, integrated views of applications, information, and business processes while enforcing business policies, processes, and security requirements.

WebLogic Portal's framework and tools are so powerful and easy to use that you can create a sophisticated, fully functional portal in minutes.

All pieces of a portal, from pages and portlets to a portal's Look & Feel elements, are individual components that can be developed quickly and independently, combined dynamically, and reused, giving portal developers, portal administrators, and end users the power to create and aggregate custom, audience-specific portals.

The following sections provide more details about WebLogic Portal's framework, tools, and services.

Anatomy of a Portal

In WebLogic Portal, a portal is more than what appears in a browser. It is a collection of resources that can be assembled in different views called "desktops." A desktop is a user's view of a portal, and a single portal can contain multiple desktops. Technically speaking, Figure   1 is a desktop rather than a portal. The portal can contain many resources such as portlets that are not included in a desktop.

For example, the HR page in an employee desktop can display non-sensitive human resources portlets such as forms and holiday schedules. The HR page in a manager desktop can contain sensitive personnel portlets such as employee salary information and performance reviews. All portlets, sensitive and non-sensitive, are part of a single portal.

Figure   2 is the same portal desktop shown in Figure   1 open in the WebLogic Workshop Portal Designer where it was built. The portal desktop is constructed using resources available in the portal.

Figure   2 and table that follows it highlight key components of a portal desktop.

Figure 2 Portal desktop in the WebLogic Workshop Portal Designer

 

1 Desktop(and Look & Feel)

The desktop is the top-level container for the portal components included in that specific view of the portal.

An important aspect of the flexible portal framework, the Look & Feel, comes into play at the desktop level. A Look & Feel is made up of two parts referenced by a single XML file: skins and skeletons. Skins contain the graphics, styles, and JavaScript code that determine the look of a desktop. Skeletons control the physical boundary rendering of all portal components.

In the Property Editor window (item 7), you can select different Look & Feels for a desktop. Portal administrators and end users can also change

a desktop's Look & Feel.

Portal administrators can create new desktops beyond what portal developers create in WebLogic Workshop.

2 Header and Footer (Shell)

The desktop header and footer display content outside the desktop's books, pages, and portlets (typically above and below). A header/footer combination is defined by a shell, which is an XML file that points to JSP or HTML files containing the content to display (colors, graphics, personalized content, and so on).

In the Property Editor window you can select different shells for the desktop. Portal administrators and end users can also change a desktop's shell.

3 Top-level book(and Menus, Themes)

The top-level book contains all sub-books, pages, and portlets. The top-level book defines the initial menu navigation style used for the desktop. For each sub-book you add to a desktop you can select a different navigation style.

In the Property Editor window you can select different navigation menu styles for books. Portal administrators and end users can change the navigation style for books.

You can also apply themes to books. Themes are Look & Feel subsets that can make a book look physically different than the rest of the desktop. Portal administrators and end users can also change themes.

4 Pages and books(and Menus, Themes)

Pages and sub-books are the navigable containers used for organizing portlets.

You can apply different navigation menu styles to books, and you can apply themes to pages and books. Portal administrators and end users can change navigation menus and themes. Portal administrators can also create new pages and books beyond what portal developers create in the WebLogic Workshop Portal Designer.

5 Layouts(and Placeholders)

Layouts determine book and portlet positioning on pages. Layouts, defined by an XML file, are divided into cells, or placeholders, in which portlets and books are placed.

In the Property Editor window you can select different layouts for a page. You can also determine whether portlets are placed horizontally or vertically relative to each other in a placeholder. Portal administrators and end users can change page layouts.

6 Portlets(and Themes)

Portlets are the containers that surface Web content and applications in your desktops. Each portlet, which you create in WebLogic Workshop with the Portlet Wizard or with the Portlet Designer, is a single XML file with a .portlet extension that references the content or application it will surface.

Using the Portlet Designer and the Property Editor window, you can add portlet preferences and configure portlet modes (such as edit and help) that add powerful functionality to your portlets—all of which is included in the .portlet XML file.

WebLogic Portal's flexible framework lets you reuse a portlet multiple times (create new instances of the portlet). The content of each portlet instance is automatically updated if the source .portlet file changes, but each instance of a portlet can be configured in unique ways (such as changing the titlebar label).

Portal developers, administrators, and end users can apply themes to portlets.

7 Property Editor window

When you select a portal component in the Portal Designer, you can set properties for it in the Property Editor window. Most portal configuration in the development environment occurs in the Property Editor window, and changes are automatically written to the portal or portlet XML file.

 

Figure   3 shows more accurately how the portal components are related hierarchically. The Document Structure window in WebLogic Workshop shows the parent/child relationships among portal components as they appear in the underlying .portal XML file, also shown in the figure. The XML is built automatically as you work in the Portal Designer.

Figure 3 Hierarchical structure of a portal desktop

 

Notice that the XML contains configuration attributes for the portal elements.

Multiple Portals and Desktops in a Single Web Application

The WebLogic Portal architecture lets you create multiple portals in a single Web application (portal Web project). In addition, each portal can contain multiple desktops, letting you flexibly provide customized content and applications to multiple audiences with reusable portal resources.

Security - Delegated Administration and Entitlements

WebLogic Portal extends the underlying WebLogic Server role and security policy architecture. With WebLogic Portal's reusable component framework, portal administrators can use dynamic, configurable policies to set up delegated administration on individual administration areas, tasks, and portal resources. Portal administrators also set entitlements on portal resources that control end-user access to portal desktops and content. For example, a portal administrator can create a desktop for regular employees and another for managers. With proper entitlements set on each desktop, employees who log in can view only the employee desktop, and managers can view either desktop. Another approach is to entitle portlets in a single desktop, where employees are allowed to view only the portlets to which they are entitled.

WebLogic Portal Tools and Services

In addition to the features already mentioned, WebLogic Portal also provides the following tools and services to help you easily create powerful, dynamic, feature-rich portals:

Multichannel Support - WebLogic Portal includes a multichannel framework for fast, flexible development of portals for mobile devices. You can develop portals that simultaneously serve multiple devices.

Content Management - BEA's Virtual Content Repository lets you combine and manage multiple BEA-compatible content management systems in a single interface. Any content in the Virtual Content Repository can be used in your portals. WebLogic Portal also provides a content repository and a reusable My Content portlet for uploading, managing, viewing, and searching content stored in the Virtual Content Repository.

Interaction Management - WebLogic Portal provides enhanced, integrated tools in WebLogic Workshop and the WebLogic Administration Portal for adding personalization and campaigns to your portal applications and tracking user behavior in your portals.

Search - The reusable Portal Search portlet provides configurable enterprise-wide search functionality. With WebLogic Portal's built-in search functionality you can build search indexes and perform file system, ODBC, and HTTP searches.

Collaboration - The reusable collaboration portlets (My Mail, My Task List, My Calendar, My Contacts, and Discussion Forums) let you provide collaboration tools in your portals.

My Yahoo! Enterprise Edition portlets - My Yahoo! Enterprise Edition lets you seamlessly blend more than 100 familiar My Yahoo! modules into your portals. Dynamic modules draw on Yahoo!'s 2,700 content sources from 25 regions in 13 languages, and include content and tools such as Headline News, Company News, Stock Portfolios, Market Summary, Weather, Sports, Maps, Travel, Notepad, Calendar, Package Tracker and much more.

Java Controls - Pre-built Java controls let portal developers quickly add Java code to portal applications for functionality such as user creation, authentication, and property set management.

WebLogic Portal Visitor Tools - With the WebLogic Portal Visitor Tools, end users can customize their portal desktops by adding and rearranging books, pages, and portlets and by changing the Look & Feel, page layouts, and header and footer (shell) used by their desktop.

Commerce - You can add commerce to your portal applications using WebLogic Portal's commerce API and JSP tags.

APIs - WebLogic Portal provides a full Java API. The Javadoc for the API can be found at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13226_01/workshop/docs81/doc/en/portal/buildportals/navReference.html.

Open Standards Support - WebLogic Portal fully supports Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 Portlet Specification standards. The portlet specification enables interoperability between portlets and portals and defines a set of APIs that address the areas of aggregation, personalization, presentation, and security.

Portal Development Lifecycle

WebLogic Portal's framework, tools, and services provide a seamless, integrated portal development lifecycle. There are two major parts in the portal development lifecycle that have a symbiotic and iterative relationship with one another: development and administration.

Development - WebLogic Portal extends WebLogic Workshop to allow easy surfacing of Web services, Java Page Flows, business process applications, and personalization functionality in portals that can be flexibly assembled for different audiences. Development involves building applications, standards-based components, and portal resources. Whether you are a J2EE developer creating EJBs or Web services, an application developer using the tag libraries to build JSPs for portlets, a portal designer creating desktops, or a graphic designer creating the icons, images, and style sheets to be used in a portal application, you are developing applications and portal resources.

Using the WebLogic Workshop Portal Extensions, developers provide administrators with the resources that they in turn make available to users, such as portal desktops, pages, portlets, campaigns, and so forth.

Developers also create user profile properties (fields) that portal administrators can set for users, and they equip portals with the WebLogic Portal Visitor Tools to let end users customize their portal desktops.

Administration - Portal administration involves portal aggregation and management using the WebLogic Administration Portal. Portal administrators use the resources created by developers to assemble and modify portals and prepare

them for production. An administrator can, for example, use development-created resources such as desktops, pages, and portlets to construct a new portal; or modify the content query of a campaign. Administrators also create new portals and portal resources such as desktops, books, pages, and portlets. WebLogic Portal's component-based framework lets administrators set up delegated administration and define visitor entitlements that determine which users can administer and view specific portal components and content.

Portal administration also involves other important tasks necessary to support the development environment. For example, an administrator must configure content repositories in BEA's Virtual Content Repository so that a developer can construct a query for a content selector, placeholder, or campaign. Administrators also add and manage the users that developers will target with their applications.

Figure   4 shows the WebLogic Administration portal. Notice that the desktop structure in the left resource tree matches that of the structure created in the WebLogic Portal Designer, as shown in WebLogic Workshop's Document Structure window in Figure   3 .

Figure 4 WebLogic Administration Portal

 

Besides portal management, portal administration involves user and group management, setting up delegated administration and visitor entitlements, modifying interaction management (personalization and campaigns), managing content, and configuring server settings.

 Getting Started with Portal Administration

 

Guidelines for Administering Portals

With the background on portal administration presented in this guide, you can begin using the WebLogic Administration Portal. This guide offers detailed instructions on how to start and log in to the WebLogic Administration Portal tools. Also, this guide provides a detailed overview to help you build a solid understanding of portals and portal administration.

Before you begin administering portals, you should plan in advance to enable your portal to fully support your enterprise. The following list suggests some activities you need to consider before administering your portal. This list is not a comprehensive planning guide for a new portal. However, it should provide sufficient guidance for getting you started.

Determine the database you want to use for your portal. BEA provides a default PointBase database for all new domains. Using a database other than the default involves procedures for switching databases.

Identify the portal audience by defining users and groups.

Identify the portal components; that is, what will be available in the portal.

Develop a convention for determining which portlets are for internal viewing and which are for external viewing.

Identify portal management roles and responsibilities; that is, who are the system administrators and portal administrators, and what are they required to do?

Develop campaign and personalization strategies carefully before adding the functionality to your portal.

You are now ready to begin administering your portal.

 

Starting the Server

Before you can begin using the WebLogic Administration Portal tools, you must start the server.

Note: This procedure assumes a successful installation of BEA WebLogic 8.1.

Go to Start>Programs>WebLogic Platform 8.1>Examples>WebLogic Portal>Launch Examples Portal.

Alternatively, you can perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to <BEA HOME>/weblogic81/samples/domains/portal.

2. Execute the startWebLogic script.

Figure 1 startWebLogic Script

 

 

Both of these start methods launch a command window and automatically begin the process to start the server. The server is running successfully when you see the RUNNING mode message in the command window.

Figure 2 RUNNING Mode

 

Note: This process might take a few minutes depending on the speed of your system.

 

Starting the WebLogic Administration Portal

To launch the WebLogic Portal Administration tools for your domain:

Go to Start>Programs>WebLogic 8.1>Examples>WebLogic Portal>WebLogic Administration Portal.

This launches a browser window and points it to the Administration Portal.

Alternatively, you can open a browser and enter the following URL: http://<hostname>:<port>/<enterprise_app_folder_name> where <enterprise_app_folder_name> is located beneath the beaApps folder in your domain.

For example, the default URL is: http://localhost:7001/portalAppAdmin.

Figure 3 Localhost URL

 

 

Logging into the WebLogic Administration Portal

WebLogic Administration Portal requires a WebLogic Server system administrator or a WebLogic Portal system administrator username and password. WebLogic Server system administrators have full security privileges for the entire domain and can log into and use the WebLogic Server Console tools. WebLogic Portal system administrators have full security privileges for an enterprise application, which can include multiple portals.

Table   4 shows the default system administrator usernames and passwords

Table 4 Default Administrators

Username

Password Description

portaladmin portaladmin Administrator for the portal domain.

weblogic weblogic WebLogic Server system administrator with full privileges in the domain.

yahooadmin yahooadmin Administrator for Yahoo content.

.

The default login is:

Username: weblogic

Password: weblogic

Figure 5 Administration Portal Login Screen

 

 

Portal Administration

Portal administration involves many traditional system administration activities, as well as tasks that control the behavior, content, and appearance of portals. While portal administrators do not typically develop the resources required for a portal Web site, they use those resources to build, maintain, and modify portals.

The WebLogic Administration Portal provides you with the tools to administer portal Web sites built with BEA WebLogic Platform:

Portal Management: Portals, desktops, books, pages, portlets, and other portal resources

Content Management: Content and repositories

User Management: User and group management, delegated administration, entitlements

Interaction Management: Campaigns, Placeholders, Content Selectors, and User Segments

Service Administration: Server settings

Search: Search within WebLogic Administration Portal

The Portal Administrator

As an administrator, you can use the administration portal to manage other users, groups, and roles to control access to the applications and assets available on a portal server.

Depending on the type of authority granted, an administrator can perform administrative tasks such as creating new portals, modifying the authority of visitors and other administrators, and modifying many of the attributes displayed in the portal. Administrators can have further control over user access by creating roles to suit the types of activities that a user (either other administrators or visitors to the portal) will undertake when using the system.

Administrators of portal assets in the Portal Library can work with portal applications and portal components to create the portals that are available to portal administrators and users.

Before You Begin

These instructions presuppose a successful installation of BEA WebLogic Workshop Platform 8.1.

 

Development Tools for WebLogic Portal 8.1

The development functionality exposed in previous releases has been replaced with WebLogic Workshop. Creating portals and portlets, previewing the application, and packaging the end result for deployment onto a server or cluster are all done inside WebLogic Workshop.

 

Starting the Development Environment

From the Windows Start menu, select Programs > BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 > WebLogic Workshop 8.1

This starts the development environment, but does not start the server.

 

Creating a New Portal

If you have not yet created a portal domain on your development machine, create one with the Configuration Wizard. For instructions, see the Overview of Platform Configuration on the BEA documentation Web site.

1. Create a new portal application. In WebLogic Workshop Platform Edition, choose File>New>Application.

Performing this step ensures you have a server (config.xml) for your portal application to use.

2. In the New Application window, select Portal Application in the right pane.

3. In the Directory field, click Browse to set the location of the new application. The application will be created in a subdirectory of the directory you select.

4. Make sure the Name field contains the name of the application. This name will be the application directory.

5. In the Server field, click Browse and select the config.xml file for the server (domain) you want to use.

6. The config.xml file is in the portal domain directory you created.

7. Click Create. The application directory appears in the Application window. The application contains the WebLogic Administration Portal (contained in

Modules/adminPortal.war), a datasync directory (data) for interaction management development, and application-level EJBs and APIs.

8. Create a portal Web project for your application. Right-click the application directory in the Application window and choose New>Project.

9. In the New Project window, select Portal Web Project in the right pane.

10. In the Project name field, enter the name for the portal Web project. This will be the name of a Web application directory.

11. Click Create. The project folder appears in the Application window. The portal Web project contains WebLogic Portal JSP tags, Web-application-level APIs, and default portal framework files.

12. If you have any external projects or files you want to include in your portal application, perform any of the following steps:

To import a project, right-click the <app-name> directory in the Application window and choose Import Project. In the Import Project window, select the type of project to import, browse to select the project folder, and click Import.

To import files, such as existing datasync files (User Segments, Campaigns, Placeholders, and so on) or the Workshop Portal Extensions sample portlets to use in your portals, right-click the appropriate directory in the Application window and choose Import. In the Import Files window, select the directory or files you want to import, and click Import.

The sample portlets are located in <BEA_HOME>\<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\samples\portal\portalApp\sampleportal\portlets. There are other useful sample files throughout the <BEA_HOME>\<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\samples directory.

You now have the resources and directories for developing interaction management functionality and creating portals to surface applications.

13. To create a portal, right-click the portal Web project folder and choose New > Portal. Enter a filename for the portal (keep the .portal extension) and click Create.

 

Previewing a Portal

WebLogic Workshop allows you to preview the current project as you work.

1. In the WebLogic Workshop menu, choose Portal>Open Current Portal.

2. If the server has not been started, you will be asked to start the server. Choose Yes.

3. Once the server is started, you can preview the current portal by navigating to the .portal file.

 

Before You Begin

These instructions presuppose a successful installation of BEA WebLogic Workshop Platform 8.1.

 

Development Tools for WebLogic Portal 8.1

The development functionality exposed in previous releases has been replaced with WebLogic Workshop. Creating portals and portlets, previewing the application, and packaging the end result for deployment onto a server or cluster are all done inside WebLogic Workshop.

 

Starting the Development Environment

From the Windows Start menu, select Programs > BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 > WebLogic Workshop 8.1

This starts the development environment, but does not start the server.

 

Creating a New Portal

If you have not yet created a portal domain on your development machine, create one with the Configuration Wizard. For instructions, see the Overview of Platform Configuration on the BEA documentation Web site.

1. Create a new portal application. In WebLogic Workshop Platform Edition, choose File>New>Application.

Performing this step ensures you have a server (config.xml) for your portal application to use.

2. In the New Application window, select Portal Application in the right pane.

3. In the Directory field, click Browse to set the location of the new application. The application will be created in a subdirectory of the directory you select.

4. Make sure the Name field contains the name of the application. This name will be the application directory.

5. In the Server field, click Browse and select the config.xml file for the server (domain) you want to use.

6. The config.xml file is in the portal domain directory you created.

7. Click Create. The application directory appears in the Application window. The application contains the WebLogic Administration Portal (contained in Modules/adminPortal.war), a datasync directory (data) for interaction management development, and application-level EJBs and APIs.

8. Create a portal Web project for your application. Right-click the application directory in the Application window and choose New>Project.

9. In the New Project window, select Portal Web Project in the right pane.

10. In the Project name field, enter the name for the portal Web project. This will be the name of a Web application directory.

11. Click Create. The project folder appears in the Application window. The portal Web project contains WebLogic Portal JSP tags, Web-application-level APIs, and default portal framework files.

12. If you have any external projects or files you want to include in your portal application, perform any of the following steps:

To import a project, right-click the <app-name> directory in the Application window and choose Import Project. In the Import Project window, select the type of project to import, browse to select the project folder, and click Import.

To import files, such as existing datasync files (User Segments, Campaigns, Placeholders, and so on) or the Workshop Portal Extensions sample portlets to use in your portals, right-click the appropriate directory in the Application window and choose Import. In the Import Files window, select the directory or files you want to import, and click Import.

The sample portlets are located in <BEA_HOME>\<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\samples\portal\portalApp\sampleportal\portlets. There are other useful sample files throughout the <BEA_HOME>\<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\samples directory.

You now have the resources and directories for developing interaction management functionality and creating portals to surface applications.

13. To create a portal, right-click the portal Web project folder and choose New > Portal. Enter a filename for the portal (keep the .portal extension) and click Create.

 

Previewing a Portal

WebLogic Workshop allows you to preview the current project as you work.

1. In the WebLogic Workshop menu, choose Portal>Open Current Portal.

2. If the server has not been started, you will be asked to start the server. Choose Yes.

3. Once the server is started, you can preview the current portal by navigating to the .portal file.