Creating Virtual Portals via templates using the New Site Wizard portlet

Working with some of my yellow brethren to build a real live portal demonstration, using WebSphere Portal, Lotus Connections, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickr etc. and I have a requirement to allow a business user to create a new "microsite" from within the portal, without needing to know or care about the bits, bytes or widgets under the covers. I decided to implement this using WebSphere Portal's Virtual Portal feature, where as VP equates to a "microsite".

Therefore, I wanted to get deep into the New Site Wizard portlet which, I was aware, can be customised, via a templated aproached.

In this scenario, I wanted to create a template from an existing portal site - one of my Portal 6.1.0.2 demo VMs has masses of Virtual Portals, including one called Tasting Department - this, with it's coffee-based theme, appealed to me.

In essence, I needed to generate three artifacts from the existing Virtual Portal: -

• Site structure, including page layout, portlets etc.
• Site look and feel, based upon a theme policy, created using the Theme Customiser portlet
• A thumbnail of the site

as follows: -

Generate Site Structure - Export VP Configuration

Use XMLAccess to export the Virtual Portal configuration, using this XML script: -

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<request

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="PortalConfig_1.4.xsd"

type="export">

<!-- sample for exporting a page -->

<portal action="locate">

<content-node action="export" objectid="*"/>

</portal>

</request>

and this command: -

c:\IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer\bin\xmlaccess.bat -in c:\work\ExportPages.xml -out c:\work\TastingDepartmentPages.xml -url http://portal.ibm.com:10040/wps/config/TastingDepartment -user

wpadmin -password passw0rd

which generates an XML file ( TastingDepartmentPages.xml ) containing the portal configuration for the Tasting Department VP ( note the URL )

Generate Site Look and Feel - Export VP Theme/Style

Use XMLAccess to export a Theme Customiser Style from portal, using this XML script: -

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<request xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="PortalConfig_1.4.xsd" create-oids="true" type="export" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<portal action="locate">

<policy-node action="export" label="WebPage" type="theme" path="Tasting Department">

<url>file:///c:/work/TastingDepartmentStyle.xml</url>

</policy-node>

</portal>

</request>

( where the style name is Tasting Department - replace with your style name )

and this command: -

c:\IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer\bin\xmlaccess.bat -in c:\work\ExportStyle.xml -url http://portal.ibm.com:10040/wps/config -user wpadmin -password passw0rd

which generates an XML file ( TastingDepartmentStyle.xml ) containing the style, in terms of navigation, font selection, images etc.

Generate Thumbnail - A picture showing the look and feel of the site

I used a tool called Irfanview to take a screenshot of the Tasting Department Virtual Portal, as I happened to be running the Portal VM on Windows - other screenshot tools exist , including Shutter on Ubuntu and Grab on OSX.

Having gathered these three things, I then created my own customised version of the New Site Wizard portlet, adding Tasting Department as a template: -

Prepare the New Site Wizard portlet

a) Download the portlet from the Catalog ( http://www-01.ibm.com/software/brandcatalog/portal/portal/details?catalog.label=1WP1001N7 )

b) Expand the resulting ZIP file - 1WP1001N7.zip - to c:\temp - I chose to do this using the Java JAR command as follows: -

\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\java\bin\jar.exe -xvf "\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\1WP1001N7.zip"

c) This extracts the contents of the ZIP, including the New Site Wizard portlet itself - NewSiteWizard.war

d) Expand the contents of NewSiteWizard.war to a temporary folder - I chose to create a subdirectory called NewSiteWizard into which I extracted the contents: -

mkdir c:\temp\NewSiteWizard

cd c:\temp\NewSiteWizard

\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\java\bin\jar.exe -xvf c:\temp\NewSiteWizard.war

e) Place the previously exported portal configuration ( TastingDepartmentPages.xml ) in the virtualportals subdirectory of the expanded WAR file: -

copy c:\work\TastingDepartmentPages.xml C:\Temp\NewSiteWizard\virtualportals

f) Place the previously exported theme policy/style ( TastingDepartmentStyle.xml ) in the styles subdirectory of the expanded WAR file: -

copy c:\work\TastingDepartmentStyle.xml c:\temp\NewSiteWizard\styles

g) Place a screenshot of the site ( TastingDepartmentNail.jpg ) in the images subdirectory of the expanded WAR file: -

copy c:\work\TastingDepartmentThumbnail.jpg c:\temp\NewSiteWizard\images

h) Amend the New Site Wizard configuration file ( C:\Temp\NewSiteWizard\WEB-INF\NewSiteWizardConfig.xml ) to include details of the new VP template: -

write C:\Temp\NewSiteWizard\WEB-INF\NewSiteWizardConfig.xml

adding the following lines: -

<site id="4">

<title lang="en">Tasting Department</title>

<description lang="en">Sample departmental intranet Web site primarily made up of coffee ( using Java beans )</description>

<layout-xml>TastingDepartmentPages.xml</layout-xml>

<content-library>Tasting Department</content-library>

<work-thread-class>com.ibm.wps.portlets.signup.tasks.CreateSiteTask</work-thread-class>

<style id="1">

<title lang="en">Tasting Department</title>

<description lang="en">Site with a smidgen of coffee-related content</description>

<style-xml>TastingDepartmentStyle.xml</style-xml>

<style-image>TastingDepartmentThumbnail.jpg</style-image>

</style>

</site>

i) Re-package the New Site Wizard portlet as a new WAR file: -

cd C:\Temp\NewSiteWizard>

c:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\java\bin\jar cvf NewSiteWizardUpdated.war *

j) As the Portal Administrator, deploy the new WAR file - NewSiteWizardUpdated.war ( as the original portlet was originally installed on my server, I used the Update Web Module control under Portlet Management -> Web Modules )

k) Deploy the New Site Wizard portlet to a page

l) Navigate to the page, and use the Wizard to create a new portal ...

m) C'est voila, here's the updated Wizard with the Tasting Department template ...