2 Portal Page Layout

The portal page is made up of sections. This chapter provides an overview of the portal page and information about customizing each section of the page.

Top Bar

The Top Bar includes the Search box, Log In/Log Off link and help link.

Some elements of the Top Bar can be customized by changing style sheets and modifying the associated strings in the portal language files. You can design a completely new Top Bar using Adaptive Tags and a custom portlet. For details on using Adaptive Layouts and Adaptive Styles, see Chapter 3, "Using Adaptive Page Layouts" and Chapter 4, "Using Adaptive Styles (CSS Customization)". For details on creating portlets, see the Oracle WebCenter Interaction Web Service Development Guide.

Header and Footer

The header includes branding information for the portal and can also be used to display content.

The footer provides additional content and can be customized to include additional functionality.

These sections of the portal page can be customized using portlets and Adaptive Layouts. For details on using Adaptive Layouts, see Chapter 3, "Using Adaptive Page Layouts". For details on creating portlets, see the Oracle WebCenter Interaction Web Service Development Guide.

Navigation

The navigation section of the page provides access to the different sections of the portal and the current community. The portal comes with a selection of built-in navigation schemes. For details, see the Administrator Guide for Oracle WebCenter Interaction. Custom navigations can be built easily using Adaptive Tags and Adaptive Layouts. For details, see Chapter 3, "Using Adaptive Page Layouts" and Chapter 4, "Using Adaptive Styles (CSS Customization)". Advanced navigation customizations can be implemented using the portal navigation framework. For details, see Chapter 9, "Customizing Portal Navigation".

Banner

The banner includes the top bar, header, and navigation sections of the page.

The entire banner can be easily customized by disabling the navigation and top bar sections and using a header portlet with Adaptive Tags to display all banner content. For details, see the Oracle WebCenter Interaction Web Service Development Guide.

Body

The body is the main section of the portal page, and displays the portlets selected for the page.

Portlets are the building blocks for the body of the portal page. Each portal page is made up of multiple portlets with a range of functionality, each providing specific content and services. The Oracle WebCenter Interaction Development Kit (IDK) provides a wide range of tools for creating dynamic portlets that plug in to the portal. For details, see theOracle WebCenter Interaction Web Service Development Guide.

The body section can be split into multiple panes in a variety of layouts, configured in the My Page or Community Editor. For instructions, see the portal online help. You can also create custom page layouts using Adaptive Layouts. For details, see Chapter 3, "Using Adaptive Page Layouts".

For very advanced customizations to the layout of the portal page, you can use View replacement (not recommended for most customizations). For details, see Chapter 13, "Using View Replacement".