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In the staging phase, you use the portal resources created in development to create the community templates with which portal administrators and end-users create communities. If you developed custom content management functionality for your community, set up the required content properties in staging.
In this phase you also set up visitor entitlements and delegated administration on community resources and configure cache for performance management in this phase. After your application is configured and tested, you deploy it to the production environment.
This chapter includes the following sections:
A community template is a special file that lets users easily create a community that has specific features and characteristics. As a portal administrator, you create community templates for end users that have specific characteristics, depending on community needs. For example, the template for a financial community would have different books, pages, and portlets than the template for a music community.
Because of the unique characteristics of each community, community templates must be well planned, from the design phase, to development, to template creation. Once in the production environment, communities must look and behave the way you want them to.
You can create community templates based on resources provided by your development team (*.ctmeta or *.portal files) or based on existing books, shells, and look and feels in the portal Library. You can also create a new book that your template will use.
To create a community template:
| Note: | If you create a new book in the template-building process, after the template is created you must go into the portal Library and configure the book with the resources you want it to have. |
If prompted to resolve conflicts, some of the resources your template uses (such as books, pages, and portlets) have the same internal names as existing resources. It may be that the resources are exactly the same, or it may be that new resources have matching names. The conflict resolution window lets you decide what to do with the resources your template is using.
| Note: | "XML mark-up" refers to the basic definition and configuration of the portlet, which does not include end-user customizations. |
The following are descriptions of community properties. These properties are set in any number of ways:
Title - The default name of the community that appears in the user interface. The title can be overridden by the localized community title.
Description - The default description of the community that appears in the user interface. The description can be overridden by the localized community description.
Allow non-members to access this community - If set to true (checked), anyone can access the community without registering as a member.
Allow anyone to register for community membership - If set to true (checked), anyone can register as a member in the community without first receiving an invitation.
Allow people to customize their view and add personal pages - If set to false (unchecked), the Visitor Tools are disabled in the community. Community administrators, however, can still access the Community Tools.
Registration Uri/Page - The path to the community registration page, usually the home page for a community.
Error Uri/Page - The path to the error page that is displayed when a user is not allowed access a community; for example, if the user is not a member or the community is disabled.
Expiration Date - The date when the community will automatically become inactive.
Make this community active now / Status - If set to Inactive, only community members with an administrative capability can access the community.
Track member visits to this community - If set to yes, the number of times members visit the community is stored in the virtual content repository.
Callback Class - The name of the class (including the package path information) that performs special tasks when the community is created, activated, deactivated, or deleted. For example, the GroupSpace callback class is com.bea.apps.groupspace.security.GroupSpaceCallbackImpl. Your development team may provide its own callback class.
Enable Tree Optimization - If set to true, improves community performance. For more information on this feature, see Designing Portals for Optimal Performance in the Portal Development Guide on e-docs.
The WebLogic Portal propagation tools do not support the propagation of communities. The tools support only propagation of community templates. For this reason, do not create communities in the staging environment. Create them in the production environment.
To test your communities prior to making them public in the production environment, create them as inactive. The community creator can then configure and test the community prior to activating it.
For information on deployment and propagation, see the Production Operations Guide.
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