Defining Portal nodes and elements
A portal is composed of nodes and elements that are arranged in a hierarchical structure.
Portal elements are the components that make up a portal. The types of elements are shown below.
- Portal Settings (such as the default language for a portal)
- Portlets
- Row containers (rows)
- Column containers (columns)
- Skins
- Themes
- Pages
- Labels
- URLs
Portal nodes can be one of the following types of URL-addressable elements:
- Pages
- Pages display the content of portlets. They can contain other nodes, including other pages. Pages can contain row and column containers, and portlets. Containers are columns or rows that you can use to arrange the layout of portlets or other containers on the page.
- Labels
- Labels do not display any content, but can contain other nodes. They are used primarily to group nodes.
- URLs
- URLs can launch any URL-addressable resource, including external Web sites (external URLs) or pages within the portal site (internal URLs). Internal URLs can only link to other pages within the portal.
Portal Hierarchy
A portal has strict rules of hierarchy that govern the placement of nodes and elements. Keep the following limitations in mind while placing elements in a portal. Portal Designer enforces these rules, preventing you from creating a site that is incompatible with your server version.
- A page requires a single top-level row or column. The top-level row or column cannot have any peer nodes.
- A row is a child of a page or a column.
- A column is a child of a page or a row.
- A portlet is a child of a row or a column.
- Sibling nodes should be of the same element type. Therefore, rows, columns, and portlets cannot coexist as peer elements.
You will also find that functions you use in the Design and Outline views such as drag-n-drop and cut-copy-paste are activated only when the move you wish to make with a certain node is compatible with your portal project version.
Navigation hierarchy
If you use the New Portal Project wizard to create a WebSphere® Portal project, the initial navigation nodes appear in the Outline view as follows:
- Home
- Task Page Definitions
- Site Map
- Login
- Edit My Profile
Creating a WebSphere Portal project using the Import wizard will yield the following nodes and pages in the portal hierarchy:
- Home
- News
- Documents
- Personalization
- Domino® Integration
- Search
- Site Map label
- About label
- Spell Checker Handler page
- Edit My Profile page
- Login page
- Task Page Definitions page
Related concepts
Related tasks
Adding portlets to portal pages
Related information