Murali Mohan wrote:

 

Hi,

New to Gatein.

I have studied the user guide and reference guide and looked through the forums. And am trying out various steps in the reference guide.

With the help of it, I could install a new skin of my own : a modified version of the sample skin at http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/gatein/portal/tags/3.1.0-GA/examples/

 

Here are a few questions I have.

 

1) The Reference Guide assumes that  assumes that you have downloaded and installed the gatein package ( jboss / tomcat with Gatein bundled).

Then you go change files inside this installation, such as (01eXoResources.war:/skin/DefaultSkin/portal/webui/component/customization/UIChangeSkinForm/Stylesheet.css) and then add css/javascript/etc of your own.

But I have not yet found a guide or documentation on deploying Gatein (or a customized version of it) into an existing App Server. That would be a common deployment scenario for my project. Is there any documentation, guidelines for achieving this?

GateIn works with Tomcat and JBoss AS. We have not tested it on other app servers. By existing if you mean existing Tomcat  or JBoss AS 5 then it should be fairly straightforward. But it's better to get started with bundle that you can download.

 

2) Continuing with deployment into App Servers, I think that Gatein will not curretly run on Websphere/Weblogic ( http://community.jboss.org/thread/146072 ). Is Websphere/Weblogic support in the roadmap? Also, would GateIn team be able to help a customer with the wci layer for Websphere/Weblogic in an OEM scenario?

See above.

 

3) Development model: I'm looking at leveraging Gatein's features (skins, themes, page-layout composer, user management, bidi support) to build a custom portal. I would want to provide my own default custom skin,custom home page layout etc. I understand this is all possible. So I'm looking for best practices or guidelines on what my development process would be. I am looking for guidelines on things like

 

a) Start with Gatein sources [easy]

2)   b) Add modules for customization;  write code

3)   c) Build : Create ear/war for my custom portal

4)   d) Deploy; debug-test

5)   e) Go back to step 2.

      Finally, packaging for shipment.

Few community members have created some wikis on that. You should start from http://community.jboss.org/wiki/GateIn Please keep in mind that developing a portal web application is very similar to developing any other web applicaiton so practices you have for ear/war/debug apply here as well.

 

      Any shared experience or pointers to guides/docs is welcome.

T    Thanks in advance!

GateIn is a community project. If you need official support, you should look at JBoss Enterprise Portal 5 (EPP5) instead.