Information for Portal Content Providers
Providing content in the Portal can help you spread your message to the Penn State community from one, centralized place. Noted below are ways in which you can customize your own Portal splash screen and/or build Portal channels.
Create a Customized Splash Screen
If you need to target your audience with certain information, then a customized splash screen can help you achieve this goal. Rather than use the Portal's default splash screen, you can arrange specific content and provide it to a pre-determined range of machines by creating a customized splash screen to quickly and effectively deliver your message before users login to the Portal.
How to Create a Customized Splash Screen
Creating a customized splash screen is easy provided that the following items are provided to portal-feedback@psu.edu:
- A layout of channels, which already exist in the Portal, that you wish to include on your splash screen, provided that the content of the channels is not restricted.
- A list of IP addresses for the machines on which the splash screen will display. The Portal will review the list of addresses everytime the splash screen and when a match is found the specified splash screen layout will be returned.
- Your cooperation in keeping your content information up-to-date. This also will help to keep your target audience engaged.
Create Your Own Channels
The easiest way to build your own content for the Portal is to use the Portal's built-in content provision tool, the RSS Generator. For information and instructions, refer to the "Penn State Portal Content Provider Tools" section of this Web site.
The three most popular ways in which most of our content providers offer content through the Portal:
- HTML (Content Channel)
- see details below
- Scripts (Execute Channel)
- see details below
- Use the RSS Generator
- Content is entered into an easy-to-use Web-based form; once the channel is ready and all steps have been followed, content will be parsed as HTML to a channel
Types of Channels
Channel types and stats are as follows:
- Applet
- Allows a content developer to embed
a Java language applet into the Portal
- Content
- HTML: Allows content developers to specify a file
containing HTML to be included in the
Portal
- Surround content with <TABLE> and </TABLE> tags
- ASCII: Allows content developers to specify a file
of text that is not to be formatted to be
included into the Portal.
- Data source location can be either of
the following:
- File: Channel resides on the Portal machine
- URL: Channel resides on another machine
- Enables you to use technologies like
ColdFusion, WebObjects, and PHP, which the
Portal doesn't natively support
- Execute
- Allows content developers to specify a program or script that is
executed when the Portal is loaded
- Generates HTML as its output
- Passes two arguments: the user's Penn State Access
Account userid and the current tab number
- Channel characteristics include:
- Program name
- Input file (optional)
- Output file (optional)
- Role
- Similar to an execute channel
- Uses LDAP information to determine a
user's role
- Based on the role, loads a particular
channel
- Examples include:
- Career Services
- Dickinson School of Law
- Affiliate
- Can be any one of the channels previously
mentioned
- Used for channels whose content will not fit
inside a normal-sized channel
- Content displayed in a new window
If you have content that you would like to provide for the Portal and it differs from the content types outlined above, please contact portal-feedback@psu.edu for information.
Regardless of the channel type(s) you wish to provide, we ask that you first contact portal-feedback@psu.edu with the following information:
- The name of your organization
- The type of content you plan to provide
- List of users within your organization their respective Access Account userids who would like to add channels
Similarly, if you plan to create channels via the RSS Generator, please provide the following to portal-feedback@psu.edu:
- The name of your organization
- The reason why you need access
- List of users and their respective Access Account userids within your organization who would like to add channels
