WebSphere

 

Portal Express, Version 6.0
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux, Windows

 

Use custom pages and themes for administrative portlets

Administrative portlets include all of the portlets that appear on the administrative pages when you navigate to Administration.

Administrative portlets are listed in Portal administration portlets.

Administrative portlets depend on services provided by the administrative themes. Most important, the <portal:adminNavHelper/> tag must be present in the parent JSPs (Default.jsp and Plain.jsp) for any theme to support administrative portlets.

 

Assigning custom themes to the administrative pages

If you want to apply a custom theme to the administrative pages, follow these steps to ensure the portlets will continue to function correctly.

  1. Make a backup copy of the /Admin and /AdminLeftNavigation theme directories.

  2. Create a new directory and copy your custom theme files into the new directory, for example, /myadmin.

  3. Add the <portal:adminNavHelper/> tag to the Default.jsp and Plain.jsp of your custom administrative theme.

  4. Add the AdminTheme.flag file to the custom theme directory as in other default admin themes.

  5. Restart WebSphere Portal Express.

  6. Open the Portal User Interface page in Administration.

  7. Open Themes and Skins and define the new theme to the server.

  8. Open Manage Pages and edit the properties of one of the administrative pages to apply the new theme to the page. The administrative pages are Portal User Interface, Portlet Management, Access, Portal Settings, Portal Content, Portal Analysis, Virtual Portals, and Search Administration.

Test the portlets on the page to make sure they function properly. If you discover any problems, edit the page properties and reassign the previous administrative theme to the page.

 

Moving administrative portlets to custom pages

The WebSphere Portal Express server relies on the Admin Unique Names Mapping Service to locate the page where specific administrative portlets are located. If you need to move one of these portlets to a different page, you can take one of these approaches.

  1. Place the portlet on the custom page, but leave a copy on the original page.

  2. Update the WP AdmininstratorUniqueNamesMappingService with the new unique name of the page where the portlet is located, as described in Setting configuration properties. Refer to Administrator Unique Names Mapping Service.

  3. Remove the unique name from the portlet's previous page and assign it to the new page.

For example, if you want to use the second approach to move the Edit Layout portlet to a page called Customize, follow these steps.

  1. Open Manage Custom Unique Names and assign a unique name to the Customize page (for example, ibm.portal.Page Customizer).

  2. Update the Puma service, as described in Setting configuration properties, to set the value of the CONTENT_LAYOUT property to ibm.portal.Page Customizer.

  3. Use the XML configuration interface to assign an administrative theme to the Customize page.

  4. Restart the WebSphere Portal Express server.

 

Parent topic:

Designing