Synchronizing Portal Pages with Portal Site library in WCM 8.0

If you disable the manged pages feature, Portal Site library in WCM is no longer automatically synchronized with the portal page structure.

After enabling manged pages feature, you can resynchronize the Portal Site library based on the current portal page structure that is stored in the portal database. If you run this synchronization, the portal database acts a master repository. Any portal page site areas in the Portal Site library that do not correspond with existing portal pages are removed from the Portal Site library. Any content site areas or content items within the affected portal page site areas are also removed.

To perform this resynchronization, run the create-page-nodes configuration task.

ConfigEngine.bat create-page-nodes -DPortalAdminPwd=userId -DWasPassword=password

How to Enable and Disable Managed pages feature in WebSpshere Portal Server 8.0?

By default, managed pages is enabled in WebSphere Portal Server 8.0. In order to disable the managed pages, one can use the following config engine task.

ConfigEngine.bat disable-managed-pages -DPortalAdminPwd=wpsadmin -DWasPassword=wasadmin

Note: Do not attempt to enable managed pages on a server where managed pages are already enabled. If you previously disabled managed pages and want to re-enable the feature, you must ensure that the "Portal Site" library is empty first. If you fail to remove page artifacts from the previous configuration, the resulting portal might not work properly.

Disabling managed pages has the following effects: 

By default, each virtual portal has its own specific workspace where content is stored. When you disable managed pages, only a single workspace for the default virtual portal is available. The workspaces of other virtual portals are still there, but you can no longer access them. Any system associations between pages in those virtual portals and their respective Portal Site libraries also no longer work. 

Note:  To preserve content in the other virtual portals, you must import or syndicate the libraries into the default virtual portal before disabling managed pages. 

You can still access the Portal Site library for the default virtual portal, but the library is no longer automatically synchronized with the page structure. 

Pages are no longer managed in IBM Web Content Manager, with the following implications: 

• No page drafts can be created.
• No new versions of pages can be created.
• Pages are no longer syndicated.
• Access control changes that you perform in the portal interface are no longer applied to the portal page site area.
• If you delete a page from the portal interface, the corresponding portal page site area is not deleted.

Try to delete the content in "Portal Site" library and then ran the following commands

ConfigEngine.bat enable-managed-pages -DPortalAdminPwd=wpsadmin -DWasPassword=wpsadmin

ConfigEngine.bat create-page-nodes -DPortalAdminPwd=wpsadmin -DWasPassword=wpsadmin

It will create lost-found and Content Root folders under Portal Site library as shown below.

How to create custom page templates in Portal ?

Portal Page Templates are used to simplify the Process while creating new portal pages by using these pre defined Portal page templates. So if your requirement is to add the same layout (portlets) to several pages you just have to create the page template once with that required layout and then you can quickly create n number of  pages by using the page template.With this feature there is no need to add the portlets to the pages every time.Follow the simple steps for creating a page template.

• Click Administration > Manage Pages.
• Click Content Root > Administration > WebSphere Portal > Portal User Interface > Page Templates to create a new template.
• Create the page to be used as a template by clicking New Page or New Page from and click Save to save the new template.
• Click the Edit Page Layout icon (pencil image) of the new page template.
• Add and configure any portlets you want to display on the page by default. Save your changes.

Creating a page using page template

Pages created from page templates contain per-configured portlets and settings.

• Click Administration > Manage Pages > Content Root.
• Click Home, or navigate to another section of the portal where you want to create a new page.
• Click New Page from.
• Select I want to make this page my private page to restrict access to the page by other users.
• In the Page Template section, select the page template you want to use for the new page from the list of available templates.
• Skip the Web Content section.
• Click OK to create the new page.

Note: If you are creating a public page, you must have at least Editor role access to the template page you are using.

Enabling Session and Portlet Events for Anonymous users

As you all know that sessions are always bind to the login users but you can do the following configuration in WebSphere Application Server to initialize a session for an anonymous user as well.

1. Login to WAS console and select Resources > Resource Environment Providers. 
2. Click WP NavigatorService > Additional Properties > Custom Properties. 
3. Click New to create new custom properties. 
4. In the Name field, type public.session and in the Value field, type true. 
6. Click OK to confirm the changes. 
7. Save the configuration. 
8. Restart portal server. 

You can also fire an event for an anonymous user using portlet wiring. To get that property we are supposed to do following configuration changes.

1. Login to WAS console and select Resources > Resource Environment Providers. 
2. Click WP PortletServiceRegistryService > Custom Properties. 
3. Add a new property with name as "com.ibm.wps.propertybroker.standard.service.PropertyBrokerServiceWrapper.com.ibm.portal.propertybroker.standard.anonymous.page.support"
4. Set the value to true.
5. Save the configuration. 
6. Restart portal server.

ISALite tool for automatic Logs Collection

What is ISALite?

ISALite (IBM Support Assistant Lite) is a tool which automatically collects the properties, xml, logs and configuration files needed by the IBM Support team from your operating system, zips up the files collected and sends the zip file directly to the support team. This tool significantly reduces the turnaround time for receiving technical feedback.

ISALite tool can be downloaded from

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=14&uid=swg24022700

How to implement friendly URLs in IBM WebSphere Portal 8-based WCM rendering

This article showcases the new feature in version 8 of IBM WebSphere Portal / IBM Web Content Manager (WCM) with which you can implement a clean-navigation, stateless URL in Portal-based WCM delivery. Also referred to as friendly URLs or human readable URLs.

How to setup authentication alias in WebSphere Application Sever?

If your application is deployed on WebSphere application server and is using its JDBC resources for making a database connection then you need to specify the security credentials. If the proper security credentials are not set or specified then you may end up getting the below error.

Authentication Alias Websphere JNDI Data source Exception Connection Failed

There are 2 ways of achieving this.

1. The easiest way is to hard code the userID / Password in your application which is not at all recommended for enterprise applications.
2. Second option is to create a component managed authentication alias in WAS which involves creating a mapping of a alias name with the specified userID/password. This alias can be later used while creating a connection factory or a data source.

 Below are the simple steps for creating an alias using WAS console,

1. Open WAS admin console using this URL https://localhost:9080/ibm/console.

Authentication Alias

2. Navigate to Security -> Secure administration, applications, and infrastructure -> JAAS -> J2C authentication data.
3. Click New to create a new alias and enter the alias name.
5. Enter the userID/Password for connecting to the database.
6. Click OK to finish.

Now while creating data source for you application to connect to database, you should use this alias name. This was you can avoid hard coding userID / Password in your application code for creating database connection.

How do you identify whether the installed WebSphere Application Server is a 32 bit or a 64 bit?

To know the architecture of current installation of WebSphere Application Server, 

Go to the WAS_HOME/bin directory and run the command versionInfo.sh. It will display whether the installed WAS version is 32 bit or 64 bit. This command can be used on Solaris as well as AIX systems.

Please see the following sample output 

bash-3.00# ./versionInfo.sh

WVER0010I: Copyright (c) IBM Corporation 2002, 2005, 2008; All rights reserved.

WVER0012I: VersionInfo reporter version 1.15.1.26, dated 8/9/08

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IBM WebSphere Application Server Product Installation Status Report

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Report at date and time March 13, 2009 5:03:44 AM EDT

Installation

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Product Directory        /global/site/vendor/WAS/WebSphere7/AppServer

Product List

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ND                       installed

Installed Product

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Name                     IBM WebSphere Application Server - ND

Version                  7.0.0.1

ID                       ND

Build Level              cf010845.08

Build Date               11/12/08

Architecture             SPARC (32 bit)

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End Installation Status Report

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bash-3.00# ./versionInfo.sh

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IBM WebSphere Application Server Product Installation Status Report

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Installed Product

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name                     IBM WebSphere Application Server - ND

Version                  7.0.0.1

ID                       ND

Build Level              cf010845.08

Build Date               11/12/08

Architecture             PPC64

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End Installation Status Report

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