Portal Express, Version 6.0
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux, Windows
Designing
WebSphere Portal Express provides a predefined page that is available to use immediately after the product is installed and started. Users can change the appearance and layout by using the Web-based user interface to switch to other predefined visual elements and layouts that are provided by WebSphere Portal Express.
This section describes how to further customize the pages to conform to the appearance and requirements of your organization Web site, including adding, removing, or changing text, colors, images, links, borders, and even the layout of the page. Much of this work involves editing the JSPs and the CSS files that provide the HTML markup and visual styles for screens, themes, and skins.
To view your changes without restarting the server, follow the steps described in the Enabling automatic JSP reloading section.
The information contained in these topics describe how to develop and test custom elements, such as themes and skins. After these elements have been successfully tested and are ready for production, make sure you follow the steps in Deploying customized themes and skins. If you do not, themes and skins that are placed directly into the file system for testing will be erased when the WebSphere Portal Express EAR is redeployed.
- Layout of the portal page
- Customizing the portal
- Using 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. - Deploying customized themes and skins
Theme and skin JSPs are managed as part of the main IBM WebSphere Portal Express enterprise application and are thus part of the WebSphere Portal Express EAR file. The WebSphere Portal Express EAR file must be updated and redeployed when adding new themes and skins. Failure to do this could cause the custom themes and skins to be deleted when the EAR file is subsequently updated. - Enabling Dogear support
Dogear is a social bookmarking tool. By default, it is not enabled in the default theme included out of the box. - Portal design reference
This section includes reference information on JSP tags.