Portal and Content - Components, part 2 – Page Templates and Navigation model

Introduction

When developing portals with WebCenter Portal, there are a few mandatory steps that cannot be forgotten. When preparing to implement a WebCenter Portal, regardless if it is targeted to be Public or Internal site, enable business users administration for design time.

Main Article

Our recommendations for Navigation Model:

• Have only one main navigation model, there is rarely reasons for multiple entry points, if required or justified you can split the navigation model into separate navigation models, however remember this will cause limit the control of the Friendly URLs
• Make sure each section of the site has a friendly sub-root name, for instance, all Footer links is under the added to the navigation /Footer/Link1, /Footer/Link2, Footer/Link3 and Main links under /(Portal Name)/Link1,/(Portal Name)/Link2 and so on
• Friendly URL navigation, I recommend that any link that takes you to another part of the site should be included in the navigation model, including footer and header links
• If you require External Application navigation like in Content links (Content Presenter - links that are added to content articles), the best practice is to use external id for this links, this way the link will not break even if you change the navigation. This will minimize the link management for external resources that is not directly related to the navigation model
• If there is any dynamics to the pages that the navigation model is referencing it is advisable to manage and store this settings in the navigation model parameters
• In the case of building a Portal application the Best Practice is to use page link as often as possible, there is of course exceptions

Navigation model editing

Index

Introduction – Introduction to the series of posts and what to expect at the end of the series