Overview

This guide provides instructions for configuring a running instance of the GridSphere portal and should be read after following the steps described in the Getting Started Guide.

Portal Configuration

Please login to the portal as the administrator. You will see several navigation links on the top right of the portal. Click the "Administration" link and you should see the configuration portlet. The first tab offers various login configuration options including allowing users to request new accounts, request password resets, the use of cookies to allow users to login without having to enter their username and password every time and more options.

The authentication modules tab displays all known authentication modules. See the Portal Reference Guide for more details on authentication module descriptions. Any authentication module may be declared as active (implying that the module will be executed when a login attempt is made) and a priority can be assigned or updated. The priority determines which module gets executed first from lowest to highest e.g. a module with priority 10 will be executed before a module with priority 50.

The mail configuration tab determines the mail settings and should be configured appropriately. If you are running an SMTP server on the same host as the portal, you can leave the default host and port to localhost and 25}. Make sure you set the portal reply e-mail and the email address of the portal administrator appropriately.

The portal notifications tab allows you to customize the emails the portal will send out to users in case of account request/approval and password resets.

Finally, the error notifcation tab gives you the option to either display unforseen errrors within the portlet they occur in (useful in development mode) or to simply indicate to the user that an error has occurred and the actual details will be sent to the portal administrator (useful in production mode).

Portlet Management

Next to the Configuration tab is a Portlets tab that provides the Portlet Application Manager portlet. Here you can display deployment details on the portlet applications that have been deployed to your GridSphere instance. By default, you will see the gridsphere web application listed along with the description, and deployment status. If you deploy a new portlet application, it is useful to look at the deployment status for any errors that may have occured. By viewing the portlet details, you can see all the of portlets for the particular portlet application and descriptions for each of them.

User Management

The User Management portlet in the Users tab provides all the necessary functionality for adding, editing and deleting user accounts. The number of logins a user has performed is also make available providing useful information on which users are accessing the portal with the greatest frequency. In addition, the administrator can send e-mails to one or more users.

Role Management

All users by default are assigned the role USER. New roles may be created and assigned to one or more users. The core roles available are USER and ADMIN and may not be deleted. The Layout Management portlet described later allows portlets to be added to a layout that can be accessed by users with a particular role.

Content Management

GridSphere provides support for simple content management. Select "Content" in the top right navigation to display the content management portlet. You can edit existing content including the portal header and footer, identified as "pageheader" and "pagefooter" in the Available Documents. The content fragments may be added to an existing layout using the Layout Management portlet.

Layout Management

Select the "Layout" link from the top right navigation to access the Layout Manager portlet. The two layouts available for editing are the guest layout which is displayed normally to all users that have not logged in to the portal. The loggedin layout provides the layout displayed to logged in portal users. Once selected, the portal layout is displayed and can be edited. Currently three options are provided for the top-level page navigation: Single divider bar, Menu bar and Double tabbed pane. In the case of menus and double tabbed panes, additional tabs can be created containing additional content and portlets. Existing portlets and content can be edited by selecting the hyperlink with the portlet or content name. This allows you to select from a list of available portlets and content and associate permissions to determine which users many have access to the content or portlet.
The layout descriptors can also be hand edited and are located in $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/gridsphere/WEB-INF/CustomPortal/layouts/{guest.xml, loggedin.xml}

Where to next?

You should now have enough knowledge to setup and configure your GridSphere portal instance. However, you are encouraged to read the Portal Reference Guide for information regarding the GridSphere portal deployment and associated files.