Customizing Your Portal
The NMI-OGCE portal distribution is built around the
Jetspeed portal
framework, so please see this link for general information.
Windows Notes: The instructions below
assume Unix file path conventions; simply reverse the path slash directions from
"/" to "\" for Windows. The Unix shell $HOME environment variable in the
instructions below should be changed to %HOMEDIR% for Windows, or you can simply
type the full path.
Note on property file updates: If you
edit any properties files, these only take effect after restarting your Tomcat
server.
- Customizing top logos: To replace
the top left hand logo with your own, do the following:
- Shutdown your Tomcat server.
- Change directories to the $HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7 directory.
- Edit
$HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7/src/conf/jetspeed/nmi_resources.properties.
- Change the values for the properties topnav.logo.authenticated.file
and topnav.logo.anon.file to point to your images.
- Place your images in the $HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7/src/images
directory.
- From $HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7, run the command "ant deploy".
- Restart your web server. The images should be updated.
- Changing the bottom logos and contact
information: The portal pages are arranged using Velocity templates,
which may be replaced as desired. The bottom of the page is controlled with
the file called "nmi_nav_bottom.vm" located in the source directory. You
may either edit this template as desired or replace it with your own.
- All paths below are relative to $HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7
- Shutdown your server.
- To replace the logos in the bottom navigation, edit
src/vm/navigations/nmi_nav_bottom.vm and replace the default image with
your choice.
- Place the actual images in src/images.
- Open src/conf/jetspeed/nmi_resources.properties with a text editor
and change the values of the bottomnav.link properties. For example,
change the "Contact Us'" value of bottomnav.link to your email address.
- From chef-1.0.7, run "ant deploy" and then restart your server.
- Changing the default portlet choices:
The NMI portal's default user login page is configured using
Jetspeed's PSML markup. This page is used as a template whenever new users
are added to the portal. To change the default settings, you can edit this
XML file by hand before installing the portal.
- Go to the $HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7 directory.
- Edit the file modules/conf/jetspeed/user_html_default.psml
- Comment out or delete any portlet entries you don't want. Portlets
displays are contained between the <portlets></portlets> tags, so you
should place the comment start (<!--) one line above the <portlets> tag
and the comment finish (-->) one line below the </portlets> tag for the
portlet that you want to remove.
- Note that this is only a one-time operation. Users may further
customize their displays.
- Changing the default anonymous user
screen: The default portal screen (the screen you see before you log
in) is owned by the "anon" user. You can edit the defaults for this by
changing the file $HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7/src/conf/jetspeed/anon_html_default.psml.
- Logging in as the Admin user: The
portal administrator account is created automatically when the portal is
compiled and deployed. You can log into the administrator account with the
user name/password combination "admin/admin". The admin user can be used to
create and control users and groups, as described elsewhere.
- Changing the portal colors:
Colors and fonts are controlled by CSS style sheets and are grouped into
Jetspeed skins. For general information about Jetspeed's use of skins, see
here.
Some specific NMI instrucitions:
- The layout skins used by the portal are ctng_skins.xreg and
skins.xreg. The latter is the default Jetspeed skins file. The NMI
skins file is located in $HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7/src/conf/jetspeed/ and
is copied to $HOME/portal/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/webapps/nmi/WEB-INF/conf
when you deploy the portal.
- The actual CSS definitions used by the skins are defined in
$HOME/portal/chef-1.0.7/src/conf/jetspeed/default.css. These are copied
into the $HOME/portal/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/webapps/nmi/css directory
when you deploy the portal.
- To change the colors used by the
portal, edit ctng_skins.xreg first. Some additional CSS classes
are defined in default.css. You can edit these in either the chef-1.0.7
directory or the nmi webapp. Before editing ctng_skins.xreg in the
jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18 directory, you should first shut down the web
server.
- Next, edit the colors used by the classes defined in default.css.
- Changing the "Welcome" Message:
The Welcome! portlet's message, "Welcome to this Chef Site", can be modified
by editing nmi_resources.properties.
- Shut down the server.
- Find the paramater site.intro.url
- Change the value to the full URL that points to the page you wish to
be displayed in the Welcome portlet.
- Restart the server.
- Changing the MOTD: This is done
through the Administrator interface and is described in Admin.htm.