2 Creating and Building a New Portal

2.1 About Creating a New Portal

Before you begin to create a new portal, review Planning a Portal with WebCenter Portal and Section 1.3.1, "What Is a Portal?"

WebCenter Portal provides portal templates for creating portals that support different types of endeavors. You can select a portal template when you create a new portal that provides a starting point for your portal, with built-in functionality appropriate for the portal you want to create. You can use an out-of-the-box portal template, or create your own custom portal templates using an existing portal as the basis for the template. For information about portal templates, see Chapter 3, "Working with Portal Templates" and Chapter 58, "Managing All Portal Templates." After creation, portals can be completely customized, including the navigation controls, the color scheme, and the look and feel of any task flow or portlet, all from within the browser.

When you create a portal, you become the default portal moderator, which means that you are assigned the Moderator role. In this role, you have Manage Security and Configuration permission in the portal, which provides full control over the portal presentation and content, as well as administrative responsibilities. When a new portal is created, WebCenter Portal creates default portal roles with default permissions. The portal moderator can assign portal members to these roles and modify the default permissions as required, or create new custom roles. For more information, see Section 7.7, "Administering Security in a Portal."

If a tool is enabled in a portal template, then that tool will be enabled in any portal based on that template. When a tool is enabled in a portal in this way at the time it is created, WebCenter Portal handles any necessary configuration with the back-end server at first use, not at portal creation. This is known as "lazy provisioning" and speeds the successful creation of a new portal by deferring the provisioning of tools until they are first used. When you manually enable tools in a portal, WebCenter Portal immediately handles any necessary configuration with the back-end server. For more information, see Section 39.1, "About Tools and Services."

Any portal can be parent to one or more subportals. This allows you to develop a portal hierarchy. For more information, see Chapter 5, "Working with Subportals."

2.2 Creating a New Portal

To create a new portal:

1. Open the portal creation wizard in any of the following ways:

   • From the Portals menu, select Create a Portal (Figure 2-1).

     Figure 2-1 Portals Menu

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-1 Portals Menu''
     
     

   • From the Portals menu, select Portal Builder to display the Portals page in Portal Builder. In the left pane, click Create Portal (Figure 2-2).

     Figure 2-2 Portals Page in Portal Builder

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-2 Portals Page in Portal Builder''
     
     

   • From the Portals menu, select Browse Portals to display the Portals page in the Home portal. In the toolbar, click Create (Figure 2-3).

     Figure 2-3 Portals Page (Portal Browser) in Home Portal

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-3 Portals Page (Portal Browser) in Home Portal ''
     
     

   The portal template selection screen displays (Figure 2-4).

   Figure 2-4 Select a Portal Template

   
   Description of ''Figure 2-4 Select a Portal Template''
   
   

2. Select a Portal Template. Explore the portal templates available to you to use as the basis for your new portal, then click Use This beneath the template you want to use to display the portal specification screen (Figure 2-5).

   See Also:

   Section 3.1, "About Portal Templates" and Section 3.3, "Creating a New Portal Template"

   Notes:

   • A custom portal template may include preseeded data, such as discussions, documents, lists, member information (including roles), pages, or assets. When you select such a template, the new portal includes all the preseeded data.

   • If the template you select is made private by another user after you select it, but before you have completed creating the portal, the template becomes invalid for your use and an error occurs.

   Figure 2-5 Portal Specification Screen

   
   Description of ''Figure 2-5 Portal Specification Screen''
   
   

3. Title and Description. Modify the default portal title if desired and, optionally, enter a description and keywords for the portal. Enter any keywords related to the content of the portal to make it more easily discoverable in search results. Separate keywords with a space or comma.

   The title that you enter here is the display name that displays at the top of the portal and other places where portals are available for selection, such as the Portals menu and the Portals page. Portal titles can contain alphanumeric characters, underscores, spaces, multibyte characters, and special characters such as & and #. The maximum allowable length is 200 characters. The following reserved keywords are not allowed as the full portal name either in upper or lowercase, or a combination of both—admin, builder, group, groups, home, last, page, pages, my portals, my spaces, portal, portals, space, spaces, system, webcenter, webcenter administration, webcenter portal, webcenter portals, webcenter space, webcenter spaces. These reserved words are allowable as part of a longer name (for example, Sales Group).

   Note:

   WebCenter Portal removes any unsupported special characters (such as -) and character spaces in the display name specified here to derive the initial internal name for the portal. For example, the Title My Mega-Portal generates the internal name MyMegaPortal. The URL to this portal is http://host:port/webcenter/portal/MyMegaPortal.

4. Attributes. If shown, enter values for the custom attributes for the portal.

   Note:

   The Attributes section displays only if the selected portal template has custom attributes defined. Figure 2-5 shows the screen when the portal template has custom attributes defined.

5. URL. Modify the default URL for the portal if desired. The internal name of the portal is derived from this field.

6. Access. Choose an access level for the portal:

   • Public (default): Anyone can visit the portal, whether they are a registered WebCenter Portal user or not. When this setting is selected, the Public-User role in the portal is automatically granted permissions to view pages, lists, events, links, notes, announcements, discussions, and documents. Public users do not have edit, create, or manage permissions in the portal.

   • Private: To access the portal, membership is required (either through invitation or self-registration if enabled). The portal will be shown in the list of available portals on the Portals page and will appear in search results.

   • Hidden: To access the portal, membership is required (through invitation). The portal will not be shown in the list of available portals on the Portals page and will not appear in search results.

   Note:

   The selected access level overrides the access level specified by the portal template that you selected. For example, if you select a portal template that specifies Public access, then select an access level of Private for the new portal, the portal is private. No public metadata is copied from the portal template, and public users have no access to the portal. Similarly, when you select a portal template that is Private or Hidden, then select Public for the new portal, public users have permissions to access pages and services in the portal.

7. To create pages for your new portal during portal creation, the wizard provides a shortcut to creating multiple pages and subpages that are immediately available in your portal upon creation. See Section 2.3, "Creating Pages When Creating a New Portal."

8. Click Create.

   WebCenter Portal reports progress while creating the portal, and notifies you when your portal has been created, providing choices for your next step (Figure 2-6).

   Figure 2-6 Portal Created

   
   Description of ''Figure 2-6 Portal Created''
   
   

9. Click one of the selections under What do you want to do next?

   • View your portal to display the Home page of the new portal, including immediate navigation to pages you created, as shown in the example in Figure 2-7.

     Figure 2-7 View Portal

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-7 View Portal''
     
     

   • Edit your portal to open the portal in the portal editor (Figure 2-8). For information about portal editing tasks, see Chapter 6, "Editing a Portal."

     Figure 2-8 Edit Portal

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-8 Edit Portal''
     
     

   • Administer your portal to open the administration settings for the portal (Figure 2-9). For information about portal administration tasks, such as adding members to the portal, see Chapter 7, "Administering a Portal."

     Figure 2-9 Administer Portal

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-9 Administer Portal''
     
     

   • (When the Documents tool is enabled in the selected portal template) Upload Documents to display the Documents page, where you can manage and add documents in the portal. For more information, see the "Creating and Managing Documents" chapter (specifically, the section "Uploading Files") in Using Oracle WebCenter Portal.

     Figure 2-10 Documents Page

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-10 Documents Page''
     
     

   • Browse all portals to open the Portals page (portal browser) in the Home portal (Figure 2-11).

     Figure 2-11 Portal Browser

     
     Description of ''Figure 2-11 Portal Browser''
     
     

   • Create another portal to create another new portal.

As the portal creator, you are automatically granted the Moderator role for this portal, and can begin to populate, customize, and manage the portal as described in the chapters of this guide.

Any portal can be parent to one or more subportals. This allows you to develop a portal hierarchy. For more information, see Chapter 5, "Working with Subportals."

2.3 Creating Pages When Creating a New Portal

You can create pages for a new portal in-place while creating the portal, using special syntax in the portal creation wizard. To create pages for an existing portal, see Section 12.2, "Creating Pages or Subpages in a Portal."

To create pages when creating a new portal:

1. In the portal creation wizard, click Add Pages (Figure 2-12).

   Figure 2-12 Creating Pages in Create Portal Wizard

   
   Description of ''Figure 2-12 Creating Pages in Create Portal Wizard''
   
   

2. To create a set of top-level pages for the portal, type the page names separated by commas (as shown in Figure 2-13) or type the name of each page on its own line.

   Note:

   By default, all new portals have a Home page. The portal template you select may also include additional out-of-the-box system pages, which you will see listed under Existing Pages. For a list of all out-of-the-box system pages, see Section 7.10.2, "Working with System Pages in Portal Administration."

   Figure 2-13 Creating Pages in Create Portal Wizard: Basic Syntax

   
   Description of ''Figure 2-13 Creating Pages in Create Portal Wizard: Basic Syntax''
   
   

3. Optionally, click see more options to view syntax and examples to:

   • create a more advanced page hierarchy including subpages

   • add a link in the page navigation to certain system pages

   • rename a page that came from the portal template

   Type the syntax according to the on-screen instructions (Figure 2-14).

   Figure 2-14 Creating Pages in Create Portal Wizard: Advanced Syntax

   
   Description of ''Figure 2-14 Creating Pages in Create Portal Wizard: Advanced Syntax''
   
   

   This example creates the new portal prepopulated with a page navigation as shown in Figure 2-15.

   Figure 2-15 Page Navigation in New Portal

   
   Description of ''Figure 2-15 Page Navigation in New Portal''
   
   

4. To revise or confirm any information entered for the portal definition, click Portal Information to return to the prior page. From there, you can click Add Pages again without losing your page specification syntax.

2.4 What's Next?

You have created a portal, and you now want to populate it. You may be in a situation where you need to set up a department portal quickly, and have content and links to add, so you can have something to show your managers before the end of the week. You have some ideas about how you want it to look, but what components and instructions do you use to accomplish your vision? Table 2-1 attempts to answer the questions you may be asking, and refers to documentation that provides the information you need.