WebSphere

 

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

 

Troubleshoot portal design

This section contains information that can assist you in preventing, identifying, and correcting problems related to IBM® WebSphere® Portal Express. For information related to specific components, see the appropriate troubleshooting topic.

 

Recovering from a faulty theme

If the portal is configured to use a theme that contains errors, the affected portal pages might not display or might display incorrectly. To avoid this problem, be sure to test and debug a theme before it is used on the portal. If a faulty theme is installed, perform the following procedure to remove it from the system:

  1. Stop WebSphere Portal Express.

  2. Delete the subdirectory for the faulty theme. The root directory for themes is located in the WebSphere Application Server directory.

    The themes folder contains a subdirectory for each markup type. The faulty theme would be in a folder below one of the markup-type subdirectories.

  3. Start WebSphere Portal Express.

  4. Log in to the portal as administrator.

  5. Click Administration.

  6. Click Portal User Interface.

  7. Click Themes and Skins.

  8. Delete the faulty theme.

 

Administrative portlets fail on pages that use customized themes

 

Problem: When one of the administrative portlets is placed on a page with a customized theme, or a customized theme has been applied to the portal administrative pages, the portlet could fail with a null pointer exception written to the log file. This problem can also occur if the portlet is launched in a new window that uses the customized theme.

 

Cause: The administrative portlet requires certain request parameters for processing. These parameters are made available to the portlet using the <portal:adminNavHelper/> tag.

 

Solution: If you need to use an administrative portlet with a customized theme, edit the parent page of the theme, typically Default.jsp, and add the following lines: 

<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/tld/portal-internal.tld" prefix="wps" %>
<portal:adminNavHelper/>

You should also make the same changes to Plain.jsp for the theme. This file can be used to open portlets in a new window.

 

Preview page does not display

 

Problem: If a user is setting the theme for a page or the skin for a portlet, the preview icon does not work if the theme or skin directory name contains double byte character set (DBCS) characters.

 

Solution: This is a current limitation. To avoid this problem, do not use DBCS characters in the directory name for new themes and skins.

 

Garbage words may be displayed in portlet page

 

Problem: If a user changes the browser language, some garbage words may be displayed in the portlet page.

 

Cause: Some strings are cached in the session for performance reasons and will only change when the session is re-created (usually during login). This can occur in all languages and will vary from portlet to portlet since caching requirements also vary.

 

Solution: This is a current limitation. Log out then log back in to solve the problem.

 

You cannot search for a portlet in a language other than English

 

Problem: When you are navigating a portal using a language other than English, you cannot search for the portlet from the portlet list.

 

Solution: Set the portlet name using the specific language for this portlet. Portlet management will use the portlet name in the browser language to search for the portlet. This is a current limitation.

 

Formatting and JavaScript problems in rendered Portal page

 

Problem: Formatting problems and JavaScript console errors and warnings occur when a page is rendering. Formatting problems may include such things as excess white space, alignment issues, and truncation. These problems may occur due to inconsistencies in the way different browsers render markup as well as differences due to the DocType specified for the page. This can be a particular problem when a "strict" DocType is specified but the markup is created based on an older "transitional" ("quirks" mode) DocType.

 

Solution: Ensure that theme and portlet output are consistent with the DocType specified by the theme the page uses. Either set the theme to use a different DocType or update the rendered markup to be compatible with the selected DocType.

 

JSP does not compile when using drag and drop (dnd) tags

 

Problem:If you wrap conditional Java scriplet code around drag and drop tags, it will not compile the JSP correctly. The tags affected are <dnd:drag>, <dnd:drop> and <dnd:dragHandle>.

Example: This is an example of wrapping conditional scriplet around <dnd:drop>. This code will not compile. 

<dnd:drag namespace="wp" type="content" value="value" multiselectable="true"> 
<div style="display: inline;"> 
<% 
if( isContentItem() )
{      
   %><dnd:drop namespace="wp" type="content" name="wp.item1" action="<%= dndLink %>" supportsMultiselect="true" multiselectDelimiter="&"><% 
}
%><img border="0" src="<%= imageLink %>" alt="Example Image" ><% 
if( isContentItem() ) 
{      
%></img></dnd:drop><% 
} 
%></div> 
</dnd:drag></dnd:drop>

 

Solution: Use a conditional statement like this: 

<% if( isContentItem() ){ %>

<dnd:drag namespace="wp" type="content" value="value" multiselectable="true">
<div style="display: inline;">
<dnd:drop namespace="wp" type="content" name="wp.item1" action="<%= dndLink %>" supportsMultiselect="true" multiselectDelimiter="&">
<img border="0" src="<%= imageLink %>" alt="Example Image" >
</img></dnd:drop>
</div>
</dnd:drag>

<% }else{ %>

<dnd:drag namespace="wp" type="content" value="value" multiselectable="true">
<div style="display: inline;">
<img border="0" src="<%= imageLink %>" alt="Example Image" >
</img></div>
</dnd:drag>

<% } %>

 

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