Exporting portal projects

Exporting allows you to manually move all or part of a portal project to a Portal server.

Unlike using the deploy wizard, the Export wizard does not update the project with information from the Portal server.

These instructions assume that you are exporting with the intention of manually deploying the project to a Portal server.

  1. From the File menu, choose File > Export.

  2. Within the Select page, select Portal Project Deploy Set; then click Next.

  3. In the Portal Project Export page, choose the Portal EAR file for export and specify a destination directory on your hard drive for the exported files.

  4. Specify a server. If the server dialogue box is empty, click New to define a server. Even though the Export wizard does not update your project with information form the Portal server, it does need to retrieve information needed during export. For more information on setting the server configuration, refer to Defining servers for importing or publishing portals.

  5. If you want to export themes and skins only, check the box next to the corresponding description.

    Option Description
    Export only themes and skins

    Selecting this option will export a wps.ear and will generate XML configuration interface scripts for registering the themes and skins with the server. No portal server configuration information such as labels, pages etc. will export.

    Export configuration and files

    Selecting this option will export a wps.ear and will generate XML configuration interface scripts to deploy the full portal project (including pages, labels, etc.) and will also export portlet projects that are referenced and placed on pages in the portal project.

  6. To export the portal project, click Finish.

The Export wizard examines the Portal server so that it can generate specific deploy information. It then generates a set of files for manually deploying the portal project to the Portal server. These files include:

If you are including relevant portlet projects with your export, these files will also be included:

The wizard copies these files to the destination directory that you specified in the steps above. This directory also contains the file DeployInstructions.txt, which is a set of instructions that will guide you through the process of manually deploying your exported project to the server selected in step 4 above. For a sample of these instructions, refer to Manually deploying exported portal projects.

Do not attempt to manually deploy the exported files to a portal server other than the one you selected in step 4. The export operation contains information from this portal server and it will not work with other servers.

If JSP files or Java classes within the portal server refer to classes that are in external JAR files, there may be compilation errors after the project is imported. You need to import any external JAR files, which can be located in the WebSphere_install_directory/lib or Portal_server_install_directory/shared/app directories on the external portal server, to your development machine, and add them to Java Build Path of your portal project. To set the Java Build Path,...

  1. From the Project Explorer view, highlight the project and select Properties.

  2. In the left pane, select Java Build Path.

  3. In the right pane, select the Libraries tab.

  4. Add the referenced JAR.

  5. Click OK to save the configuration.

 

Related tasks

Defining servers for importing or publishing portals
Deploying portal projects