Providing Content and Services to a Group of Users through
a Community
Communities are sites
within a portal designed for a specific audience or task, such as
collaborative projects. You might have communities
based on departments in your company. For example, the Marketing department
might have a community containing press information, leads volumes,
a trade show calendar, and so on. The Engineering department might
have a separate community containing project milestones, regulatory
compliance requirements, and technical specifications.
Before you create a community, you must:
- Create the community template on which this community will be
based
- Create the page templates on which your community pages will be
based
- Create any portlets you want to add to the community pages
To create a community you must have the following rights and
privileges:
- Access Administration activity right
- Create Communities activity right
- At least Edit access to the parent folder (the folder that will
store the community)
- At least Select access to the community template on which this
community will be based
- At least Select access to any page templates you will use to create
community pages
- At least Select access to any portlets you want to add to the
community pages
- Click Administration.
- Open the folder in which you want to store the community.
- In the Create Object drop-down list,
click Community.
The Community Editor opens.
- On the Community Pages page, complete
the following tasks:
- <xrefs to tasks that can be performed on this page>
- Click the Header and Footer page
and complete the following tasks:
- Click the Subcommunities page and
complete the following tasks:
- Click the This Community's Groups page and complete the following tasks:
- Click the Header and Footer page
and complete the following tasks:
- Click the Portlet Preferences page
and complete the following tasks:
- Click the This Community's Portlets page and complete the following tasks:
- Click the Properties and Names page
and complete the following tasks:
The default security for this community is based on the security
of the parent folder. You can change the security when you save this
community (on the Security tab page in the
Save As dialog box), or by editing this community (on the Security page of the Community Editor).
- Applying a Community Template to a CommunityEach community is based on a community template. Community templates define the basic structure for the resulting communities, such as which page templates to include and, optionally, a header or footer for the community. A single community template can be used by many different communities, allowing you to keep similar types of communities looking analogous. For example, you might want all communities based on departments to look similar and contain similar content, but you might want communities based on projects to look different.
- Setting the Community Home Page and Ordering Community PagesThe order in which pages are displayed in the Community Pages list is the order in which the page links will display to users. By default, the first page you add to a community, whether directly or via a community template, will be the home page of your community.
- Adding Headers and Footers to CommunitiesYou can add header and footer portlets to communities to control what community members see at the top and bottom of the pages in the community.
- Setting Security on a CommunityBy default, a new community inherits the security of the parent folder, but you can change this security.
