Redbook released for Managing WebSphere Portal 6.1 Environments

WebSphere Portal Family wiki has released a redbook for managing WebSphere Portal 6.1 environments. This document(wiki) provide information about how to set up a portal environment, including development, staging and production, and how to move changes through the system.

It's available on the WebSphere Portal wiki click here.

How to create 'Edit My Profile' link in custom theme

You may come across a scenario where you need to build a custome theme for the portal in which you need to hide the default lunch button and main menu. By doing this you found that "Edit My Profile" link normally accessed via the Launch button is also hidden.Therefore there is a need to display "Edit My Profile" link in the custom theme that displays at the top of each page.Link should also behave exactly the same way as the one in main menu.


Here are the steps you should follow to get the 'Edit My Profile' link working in your custom theme:

1. First you need to create a unique name for the portlet on selfcare page in portal.Use XMLAccess to export the selfcare page.


• Login to the portal with admin access and navigate to the Edit My Profile Page.


• There is an icon for exporting a page. Click on that.


• This will generate an XML file "pageExport.xml", save this on your system.


2. Update the file so that it has the basic format shown below. Delete the tags and add the uniquename attribute to the final tag as shown below in bold. Add nothing else; delete nothing else.
   
<br /> <component action="update" active="true" deletable="undefined" domain="rel" modifiable="undefined" objectid="7_UV9FQLI11G5GA026LUEL0D1OK0" ordinal="100" orientation="H" type="container" width="undefined"><br /><component action="update" active="true" deletable="undefined" domain="rel" modifiable="undefined" objectid="7_UV9FQLI11G5GA026LUEL0D1OK4" ordinal="99" orientation="V" type="container" width="undefined"><br /><component action="update" active="true" deletable="undefined" domain="rel" modifiable="undefined" objectid="7_UV9FQLI11G5GA026LUEL0D1OK2" ordinal="99" skinref="K_UV9FQLI11G5GA026LUEL0D10E1" type="control" width="undefined" uniquename="wps.t.Selfcare"><br /><portletinstance action="update" domain="rel" objectid="5_UV9FQLI11G5GA026LUEL0D1OK6" portletref="3_UV9FQLI11G5GA026LUEL0D1GQ5"><br /></component><br /></component><br /></component>


3. Save and close the file.


4. Open this xml file into the portal by navigating to Administration->WebSphere Portal->Portal Settings->Import XML->


Browse the xml file on your system and click on the import button. See for the message successfully imported.
5. Open the Default.jsp file in your custom theme in a text editor. In the appropriate place where your "Edit My Profile" link should appear, add the tags shown below.


• The contentNode attribute must contain the custom unique name of the 'Edit My Profile' page, i.e., "wps.Selfcare".


• The compositionNode attribute must contain the new custom unique name you just added via XMLAccess, i.e., "wps.t.Selfcare".
<portal-navigation:urlgeneration contentnode="wps.Selfcare" compositionnode="wps.t.Selfcare" portletwindowstate="Maximized" themetemplate=""><portal-navigation:urlparam type="render" name="ao" value="thm"><portal-navigation:urlparam type="render" name="OCN" value="ibm.portal.Home.Welcome"><a id="manageProfileLink" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8193607375900156692&postID=5962854348205659357"><portal-fmt:text key="'link.selfcare'" bundle="'nls.engine'/"></portal-fmt:text></a></portal-navigation:urlparam>


6. Save and close Default.jsp. Test the new "Edit My Profile" link to confirm that it works as expected.


Note: This procedure will not work in a portlet. You need to use the URL generation services to create links in the portlet to the page or other portlets.

IBM Updates WebSphere Portlet Factory

IBM has released latest version 6.1.2 of Websphere Portlet Factory to bring enhancements that will allow developers to get Web 2.0 applications up and running quicker than before. It runs on all the major operating systems and runs on websphere application server 6 & 7.

More details can be found at http://www.itjungle.com/fhs/fhs011309-story08.html

Download WCM 6.1 redbook

Here comes a really great resource for all of you working on or going to work on ILWWCM. I must thank my friend krishna bhupathi (Currently working in IBM - US) for providing such a valuable resource.

You can down load this redbook from the following link.

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/portalwiki.nsf/dx/pdfwikiwcm61

Changing Administration(wpsadmin/wpsbind) passwords in IBM WebSphere Portal 6.0

Generally we don't need to change the administration password for the portal once installed and configured properly. But there might be a situations or unavoidable circumstances when you want to change the administration passwords after installation or may be at any point of time when you need it badly. In fact I need it last week.. ;). So here are the steps to do it. These are the steps already mentioned in the websphere portal resources, I just made it easier to access...


IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM WebSphere Application Server use some user account as "Security Server ID" for the WebSphere Application Server JVM, access ID or bind ID for authenticated access to databases and LDAP servers, and WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal administrative ID's.

If the password for any user ID is changed either by Websphere portal edit profile screen or through LDAP directly then the password value stored in the appropriate configuration file must be changed.

Changing the WebSphere Portal administrator password

WebSphere Portal treats wpsadmin (the administrator) as any other user, just with more permission granted. It is possible to change the wpsadmin or equivalent password through the user interface (UI), just like any other user can manage their own password through the UI. However, if the wpsadmin account is also used for more than just the administrator, then additional changes, outlined in other steps in this section, must be made to accommodate the change.

Follow these steps to change the WebSphere Portal administrator password:

1. Log in to WebSphere Portal as the administrator.
2. Click Edit My Profile.
3. Change your password in the appropriate box.
4. Click Continue.

Note: You can also change the WebSphere Portal Administrator password, like any other user password, using an LDAP editor.

Note: The WebSphere Portal configuration tasks that enable security automatically set the Security Cache Timeout to a value specified in the wpconfig.properties file. Old passwords are stored in cache for this amount of time. The default value is 600 seconds.

For the version 6.0.1

After successfully changing your password, you will need to make additional changes to the RunAsRole passwords; see WebSphere Portal requires additional changes to the RunAsRole passwords for the EJBs to support password change for WPSAdmin and WASAdmin users for information.

Changing the WebSphere Application Server administrator password using WebSphere Portal

You can change the password for the IBM WebSphere Application Server administrator user ID using the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console.

• Confirm that the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Server and Administrative Console are running.
• Log in to the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console as the administrator.
• Log in to WebSphere Portal as the WebSphere Application Server administrator and select Edit Profile.
• Type a new password and click OK.
• In the WebSphere Application Server Administrative Console do one of the following, depending on the type of security installation:

• LDAP (non-realm): Click Security > Global Security > User registries > LDAP.
• LDAP (realm): Click Security > Global Security > User registries > Custom.

Note: As we are have configured LDAP with realm support we will take that scenario for this document.

§ From the command prompt, change to the portal_server_root/config directory.

§ Enter the following appropriate command to encrypt the new password:

WPSconfig.bat -DPassword=<new_password> wmm-encrypt

§ The script returns a value for the ASCII encrypted string. You can see that in your command prompt.

§ If you have a Base installation, open the portal_server_root/wmm/wmmWASAdmin.xml file with a text editor.

§ Copy the value from the ASCII encrypted string and paste it in the logonPassword field of the wmmWASAdmin.xml file.

§ Adapt the admin logon and uniqueUserid fields to the distinguished name of the new user.

• Change Server User Password to the new value using admin console for application server and save the changes.
• Stop and restart the WebSphere_Portal and server1 servers.

Note: The configuration tasks that enable security automatically set the Security Cache Timeout to a value specified in the wpconfig.properties file. Old passwords are stored in cache for this amount of time. The default value is 600 seconds.

For the version 6.0.1

After successfully changing your password, you will need to make additional changes to the RunAsRole passwords; see WebSphere Portal requires additional changes to the RunAsRole passwords for the EJBs to support password change for WPSAdmin and WASAdmin users for information.

I have successfully implemented these steps. :) If any of you find it hard on your portal environment, just drop a comment, may be I can help you.

Naming convention for Websphere Portal Resources

Last week I came across an article on Websphere portal wiki which gives some idea on portal naming convention. In my past portal projects I have seen that usually project team do not give a due importance to this little thing which can be very handy. Following are the few points for your quick reference.

1. Every portal page must have a uniqueName defined by the administrator
   
   Use your own uniqueName instead of the automatically generated one.
   


2. Portal page uniqueNames will follow the java package naming conventions
   For example, the uniqueName of the home page would be :
   
   com.yash.portal.home
   
   the uniqueName of the 'Home >About Us' page would be
   
   com.yash.portal.home.aboutUs
   
   the uniqueName of the 'Home > About Us > Leadership team' would be
   
   com.yash.portal.home.aboutUs.Business Leadership
   
   


3. Using this name convention, we can reserve special suffixes for particuliar processing the .hidden suffix will be used for pages that should not appear in the navigation menus. We can then code the Theme so as to filter out of the navigation menus, all pages whose uniquename ends with the .hidden suffix
   


4. All custom coded WAR files will be prefixed by the Company Name.
   
   For example YASH_ContentPortlet.war
   
   
   This helps when updating portlet applications from the admin console, as you can quickly find the company's own portlets by using 'Title starts with' Filter
   

WebSphere Portal 6.1.0.1 Beta 1 with support for WebSphere Application Server (WAS) 7.0

If you are interested in taking advantage of the new features of WebSphere Application Server 7 with WebSphere Portal, an open beta is available for test / pilot WebSphere Portal.It is available on VM Suse image. Just load the VM image and start the server. Here is the link for that...

WebSphere Portal 6.1.0.1 Beta 1 with support for WebSphere Application Server (WAS) 7.0