1. Oracle WebCenter Portal Online Help
  2. Online Help Topics for Portals
  3. General

General

The General page in portal administration allows you to modify general settings for a portal, such as the title (display name) and description, the internal name, and to perform general actions on a portal, such as closing an inactive portal, taking a portal offline to perform maintenance tasks, adding RSS feeds, or deleting the portal.

Changing the Title of a Portal

A portal title displays at the top of the portal and other places where portals are available for selection, such as the Portals page. In prior releases, the title was referred to as the display name.

Note:

Changing the title does not affect the internal name and URL for the portal.

To change the title (display name) of a portal:

  1. On the General page, under Portal Information, modify the Title as desired.

    The title that you enter here is the display name that displays at the top of the portal and other places where portals are available for selection, such as the Portals menu and the Portals page. Portal titles can contain alphanumeric characters, underscores, spaces, multibyte characters, and special characters such as & and #. The maximum allowable length is 200 characters. The following reserved keywords are not allowed as the full portal name either in upper or lowercase, or a combination of both—admin, builder, group, groups, home, last, page, pages, my portals, my spaces, portal, portals, space, spaces, system, webcenter, webcenter administration, WebCenter Portal, webcenter portals, webcenter space, webcenter spaces. These reserved words are allowable as part of a longer name (for example, Sales Group).

    Note:

    WebCenter Portal removes any unsupported special characters (such as -) and character spaces in the display name specified here to derive the initial internal name for the portal. For example, the Title My Mega-Portal generates the internal name MyMegaPortal. The URL to this portal is http://host:port/webcenter/portal/MyMegaPortal.

  2. Click Save.

Modifying the Acronym for a Portal

When a portal displays as a color tile in the portal browser, it is overlaid with a portal acronym, which is useful to quickly identify a portal in the portal browser, in combination its tile color and name.

When a portal is created, WebCenter Portal generates an acronym for the portal as follows:

  • If the portal's display name is three or more words, the acronym is the first letter of the first three words, capitalized. For example, the acronym for a portal named My XYZ company is MXC.

  • If the portal's display name is two words, the acronym is the first letter of each word, capitalized. For example, the acronym for a portal named Team 999 is T9.

  • If the portal's display name is one word and the length of word is two or more letters, the acronym is the first two letters of the word, capitalized. For example, the acronym for a portal named Philatelists is PH.

  • If the portal's display name is only one letter, the acronym is that letter, capitalized.

  • The same acronym for multiple portals is allowable.

The acronym is shown only when the portal displays as a color tile in the portal browser. If the portal displays a logo instead of a color tile, the acronym is not shown.

To change the acronym for a portal:

  1. On the General page, under Portal Information, modify the Acronym as desired.

    Note:

    The following limitations apply to portal acronyms:

    • No more than 5 alphanumeric characters, uppercase or lowercase.

    • The following reserved keywords are not allowed as the acronym name either in upper or lowercase, or a combination of both—admin, group, home, last, page, pages, space.

  2. Click Save.

Modifying the Description for a Portal

A portal description appears in the listing of the portal on the Portals page.

To change the description for a portal:

  1. On the General page, under Portal Information, modify the Description as desired.
  2. Click Save.

Modifying the Color for a Portal

By default, a portal is shown in the portal browser as a color tile, overlaid with an acronym and portal name.

The default color is inherited from the portal template selected during portal creation. On the portal administration Settings page, you can specify whether the portal tile should display a color or logo in the portal browser.

To change the color used to display a portal in the portal browser:

  1. On the General page, under Portal Information, click Choose Color to select a new color for the portal tile in the portal browser.
  2. Click Save.

Modifying the Keywords for a Portal

Keywords are useful to make a portal more easily discoverable in search results. You can specify keywords for a portal when you create the portal or add, change, and delete them later, as described here.

To add, change, or delete keywords for a portal:

  1. On the General page, under Portal Information, modify the Keywords as desired. Separate keywords with a space.
  2. Click Save.

Changing the Internal Name (and URL) of a Portal

If necessary for some purpose, you can change the internal name of a portal. It is important to note that when you change the internal name, you are also changing the pretty URL that other people use to navigate to the portal. The format of a portal pretty URL is as follows:

http://host:port/webcenter/portal/portalName

For example: http://mycompany:8888/webcenter/portal/philatelists.

This means that when you change the internal name of a portal, existing bookmarks to the portal URL will no longer work. You can change the portal title; that is, the display name for the portal.

To change the internal name of a portal:

  1. On the General page in portal administration, under Portal Details, click Rename next to the portal name.
  2. In the Rename Portal dialog, enter a new internal name for the portal, then click Rename.

    Note:

    Use only alphanumeric characters for the internal name for a portal.

    The pretty URL that can be entered in a browser to directly access the portal uses the new internal name:

    http://host:port/webcenter/portal/newInternalPortalName

Closing or Activating a Portal

By default, a portal is active. You can close a portal that is no longer being actively used. Closing a portal archives its content. When you close a portal, it is removed from everyone's Portals menu and displays in the portal browser only when a user selects Closed from the Show list.

The content of a closed portal remains accessible and searchable to those who still want to reference it and portal members can continue working in the portal either by displaying closed portals on the Portals page, or by pretty URL (http://host:port/webcenter/portal/closedPortalName).

When a portal is closed, any activities performed in the portal are no longer reflected in the Activity Stream in the Home portal. Only the Home page of the closed portal shows activity in the portal.

To close down a portal temporarily, take the portal offline instead.

To close a portal, on the General page in portal administration, under Status, deselect the Active check box.

To reactivate the portal, select the Active check box.

Taking a Portal Offline or Online

By default, a portal is online. You can take a portal temporarily offline for maintenance. For example, if you notice inappropriate content, you can take a portal offline to modify its content, then bring it back online. Only the system administrator or portal members with Manage Configuration permission can access a portal that is offline, or bring it back online. Other members see the Portal Unavailable page.

To take a portal offline:

  • On the General page in portal administration, under Status, deselect the Online check box.

To bring the portal back online, select the Online check box.

Enabling or Disabling RSS News Feeds for a Portal

Portal members can find out what is happening in a portal through RSS news feeds. By default, RSS news feeds are disabled. When you enable RSS news feeds within the context of a portal, members can watch for revisions to lists.

To allow members access to portal information through RSS feeds:

  • On the General page in portal administration, under Status, select the Publish RSS check box.

To disable RSS feeds for this portal, deselect the Publish RSS check box.

Deleting a Portal

When a portal has been closed or inactive for some time and is no longer needed, you can remove it permanently from WebCenter Portal. A portal manager or member with Manage Security and Configuration permission can delete the portal. Deleting a portal is permanent; it cannot be restored after it is deleted.

When you delete a portal:

  • All pages associated within the portal are deleted.

  • Links, lists, notes, tags, and events associated with the portal are deleted.

  • Portal roles and membership details are deleted.

  • The portal mail distribution list that is automatically created byWebCenter Portal is deleted. However, distribution lists that are customized by the portal manager are not deleted.

  • Content managed by external services, such as content repositories, mail, and so on, is removed.

To delete a portal:

  1. On the General page in portal administration, under Actions, select the Delete this Portal.
  2. In the confirmation prompt, click Delete to confirm or Cancel to preserve the portal.

If the delete process fails for any reason, the portal is not removed from your Portals tab. This sometimes happens when a back-end server cannot be contacted. If you click Delete again, the portal is removed.