Understanding the portal page template and auxiliary files that are used provides important information for customizing a portal or for understanding the context in which gears are rendered. If you use the page templates provided with ATG Portal, then you do not need to develop new portal page templates, but you will still need to understand the portal page template context. In addition, to change the look and feel of your portal pages, you will need to edit the default templates (after making backup copies).

For a listing and description of the provided template files, see the Portal Configuration chapter of the ATG Portal Administration Guide. For more detailed information on customizing a portal, see the Creating a Custom Portal chapter of this manual. For information on the PAF tags that appear in the code samples in this chapter, see Appendix B, PAF Tag Library Reference and the Gears and the Portal Application Framework chapter.

This chapter includes the following sections: