You will probably want to customize the visual style of your portal application. Portal administrators can control the portal’s look and feel by adding the following style elements:

As with gear definitions, these style elements are registered with the PAF by creating and importing an XML manifest file containing data describing the palette, stylesheet, or template. Uploading the manifest file places the data in the portal repository and makes the PAF aware of it. This chapter explains the format of the XML manifest files.

For instructions on registering your gear, refer to the Portal Administration chapter of the Portal Administration Guide. For descriptions of the Page Templates, Layout Templates, and Gear Title Templates provided with the Portal module, see the Portal Configuration chapter of the Portal Administration Guide.

Sample manifest files are located in the <ATG11dir>/Portal/paf/starter-portal/paf-dar/portal/WEB-INF/templates directory:

/color/color-manifest.xml
/layout/layout-manifest.xml
/page/page-manifest.xml
/style/style-manifest.xml
/titlebar/titlebar-manifest.xml

If you followed the custom portal creation process described in the Creating a New Portal section of this chapter, there will be copies of these manifest files in the <ATG11dir>/MyPortal/portal/WEB-INF/templates directory. We recommend that you save your manifest files after you have imported them into the PAF as they simplify the process of upgrading customization features or moving them to another portal. Once you register color palettes, stylesheets, or templates you can use the Community Administration utilities to associate them with particular communities or with the entire portal. For information about using style elements in the Community Administration, see the Style Administration section in the Portal Administration chapter of the Portal Administration Guide.

There is a Document Type Definition (DTD) that prescribes the format and content for your manifest files. For reference material on the DTD’s elements and a copy of the DTD, see Appendix A: Portal Manifest Reference.