# Adding Books and Pages to a Portal

You can organize the information on your portal desktop by adding books and pages. Each book and page has its own link or tab to access it.

For example, you could add the following to your Portal:

- A Page called "Company Information"
- A Book called "Human Resources" that contains two pages: "Benefits" and "Forms." You could even make "Forms" a sub-book instead of a page and add sub-pages to it such as "New Hire Forms" and "Personal Information Change Forms."

You can also rearrange and delete books and pages and enable book editing for users.

This topic contains the following sections:

To add books and pages to a portal desktop

To rearrange books and pages

To delete books and pages

To enable book editing

To add books and pages to a portal desktop

1. Open a Portal file.
2. In the Palette window, drag and drop the Book control or the Page control into the area of the designer where you want it to appear.
   Note: If you want to use drop-down menu navigation (Multi Level Menu), drag the Book control into the tab area of a parent book rather than into a page.
3. In the Document Structure window, select the book or page and set its properties in the Property Editor window. Use the Book and Page Properties reference topic for guidance.

4. Save the Portal file.
5. Set up navigation for the portal desktop to control how the books and pages are accessed.
6. Add portlets to your pages.
7. Apply a Look & Feel to your Portal Desktop.

The books and pages you add to your portal in the Portal Designer become part of the .portal template that portal administrators can use to create portal desktops in the WebLogic Administration Portal.

To rearrange books and pages

You can change the order of books and pages. For example, if the main page book contains a page and a book in the following order:

Home Page | My Book

you can change the order to:

My Book | Home Page

To change the order of books and pages, right-click the book or page you want to move in the Document Structure window, and choose Move Up or Move Down. The book or page moves up or down in the Document Structure window, and the horizontal reordering occurs in the Portal Designer.

Rearranging books and pages does not rearrange them in any portal desktops you have created with the WebLogic Administration Portal. See the WebLogic Administration Portal online help system for instructions on rearranging those books and pages.

To delete books and pages

To delete books and pages from a .portal file, right-click the book or page you want to delete in the Document Structure window and choose Remove Page for a page or Remove > This Book for a book. You can also delete a book's sub-books and pages by right-clicking the book and choosing Remove > <book/page name>.

Deleting books and pages does not delete them from any portal desktops you have created with the WebLogic Administration Portal. See the WebLogic Administration Portal online help system for instructions on deleting those books and pages.

To enable book editing

You can create a JSP to let users modify book properties and let users access that edit JSP from a book.

1. Create the edit JSP and store it within the portal Web project.
2. Add a link to the edit page on the book. With the .portal file open in the Portal Designer, select the book you want users to be able to edit.
3. Set the editing link in one of the following ways in the Property Editor window:
   1. If your book uses a menu style (in the Navigation field), set the Editable field to Edit in menu.
   2. If your book does not use a menu style, set the Editable field to Edit in titlebar.
4. When you select an Editable value, the Property Editor window adds a new set of properties called Mode Properties. Enter values for these properties, especially Content URI, which points to the edit JSP you created. Click the ellipsis icon [...] in this field to select your JSP.
   See Mode Properties in "Book and Page Properties" for more information.
5. Save the portal file.

When the desktop is rendered, the skeleton puts an edit icon in the table row of the menu or active book. When a user clicks the edit icon (activate), the edit page appears and the edit icon changes to a deactivate icon.

The names of the activate and deactivate icon graphics are registered in the project's WEB-INF/netuix-config.xml file under the <window-mode name="edit"> entry. The actual graphics are stored in the skin's /images subdirectory.

## Samples

See Portal Samples for instructions on viewing a sample portal file.

Related Topics

Setting up Navigation

Adding a Portlet to a Portal

Changing Look & Feel

What is a Portal?

WebLogic Administration Portal Online Help