15.8 Troubleshooting Portlet Issues

Why can't I add content to a region?

You may not have sufficient privileges to add content. You must have at least the page (or tab) privilege Manage Content or Manage Items with Approval on the page or on the tab that contains the region.

If the page is based on a Portal Template, and the template region is locked, no one can add content to the region, unless they do so through a WebDAV client. If the default item region in a template is set not to allow users to add content, this setting is ignored by WebDAV when adding content to pages that are based on the template.

To unlock a region:

  1. Open the page or Portal Template in Edit mode, and edit the region.

  2. Select Enable Users To Included Content In This Region.

  3. Click OK to save your changes and return to the page or Portal Template.

My page portlet is using the style of the target page rather than the style of its source page, as I have specified.

Page portlets always take their header and border colors from the page on which they are placed. This is because the display of headers and borders is controlled on the target page, rather than from any values set for the source page's style.

One way around this is to edit the region in which the page portlet is placed and turn off the display of portlet headers and borders. If the page portlet contains its own portlets, you must also turn off the display of headers and borders for regions on the page portlet's source page.

For information on turning off region headers and borders, see Section 10.2.12, "Displaying or Hiding Portlet Headers and Borders".

Portlet background colors usually are specified by the style that is applied to the page on which the portlets are placed. With a page portlet, there is a way to display the source page's background color. Edit the style that is applied to the page on which the page portlet is placed (the target page). For the style element Portlet Body Color, remove the value from the Background Color field, and click Apply. The background color specified for the page portlet's source page (that is, Background Color property of the Common style element) displays.

To illustrate this for yourself, create a page named Source and a page named Target. Create a Source Style for the Source page and a Target Style for the Target page. Set all the color values for Source Style to the red end of the color palette. Set all the color values for Target Style to the blue end of the color palette.

Tip:

When you edit styles, a quick way to move from style element property to style element property is to click the style element property in the Preview section of the Edit Style page. This selects the style element property and displays all of its values for editing

Add some portlets and items to the Source and Target pages. Publish the Source page as a portlet. Place the Source page portlet onto the Target page.

For the Source page, experiment with selecting and de-selecting Use Style Of Page On Which Portlet Is Placed, and viewing the result on the Target page. Also, experiment with specifying and clearing the value field for the Background property of Target Style's Common style element.

My page portlet is not using the style of the container page, as I specified.

When you publish a page as a portlet, you are given the opportunity to use the source page's style or to use the style of the containing page. Using the style of the containing page works in most cases. The exception is when the source page is provided through the Federated Portal Adapter. In such cases, the setting to use the style of the containing page is ignored. The page portlet uses whatever style is applied to its source.

I published a page as a portlet, placed it on a page, and displayed selected regions. Now it is displaying blank.

This involves the source page and a Portal Template. When you edit or personalize the Page portlet to display selected regions, and a change is made to the portlet's source page regarding the template—either a template is added or detached or a template region equivalent to a region selected for display on the portlet is deleted—the portlet cannot resolve such changes with its Display Selected Regions setting. The result is that the portlet displays without content—or blank. To resolve this situation, re-edit or personalize the portlet's region display settings.

To personalize a portlet, in page View mode click the Personalize link in the portlet header. For more information on restricting the display of regions in a page portlet, see Section 8.5.3, "Selecting Page Portlet Regions for Display".

I added a portlet to a page in Edit mode, and it does not display in View mode.

Is the portlet or its container page cached at the system level? Portlets cached at the system level display only Public content. If the objects displayed in the portlet are not public, they do not display. Typically, whether or not these objects display is dependent on a user's level of privilege on the objects.

If you have sufficient privileges, edit the page or edit the portlet instance, and change the caching option to non-system-level caching. Page caching options are located on the Main tab of page properties. Portlet instance caching is available by clicking the Actions icon next to the relevant portlet in page Edit mode.

My Page portlet/navigation page is using the background color of the container page, rather than the source page, as I prefer.

To ensure that a page portlet or navigation page uses its own background color, rather than the one specified for the page it is placed on:

  1. Ensure that the page portlet or navigation page uses its own style when it is published as a portlet (that is, do not select this option for the page or navigation page that you are using as a portlet).

  2. In the style that is used by the target page (that is, the page where you place the page portlet or navigation page), set Portlet Body Color style element to Null (no value).

I collapsed my portlet, but now it's restored.

Some users have a high enough privilege level to suppress the display of the Collapse/Restore icon on a portlet header. Once the icon display is suppressed, all instances of collapsed portlets on the affected page are restored automatically to prevent them from being stuck in a permanently collapsed state.

Should the privileged user reinstate the display of the Collapse/Restore icon on the portlet, all portlet instances are reset to the state they were in before icon display was suppressed.

How can I remove the "decoration"—the graphics and links—at the top of the portlet edit and personalize screens?

Look for the _decoration=true parameter in the portal URL, and change the value to _decoration=false. If the portal URL does not contain the _decoration parameter, append it to the end of the URL as &_decoration=false.

This parameter is useful with the Portal Developer Kit (PDK) when you want to develop a portlet that does not use these links and decorations.

More on the Oracle Technology Network
Read about PDK on the portlet development page on the Oracle Technology Network, http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/portal/portlet_development_10g1014.html.