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Customizing the theme

The module framework allows themes to be customized in order to provide flexibility, enhance the user experience, and maximize performance.

  • Theme Editor Portlet
    The Theme Editor portlet is a new addition to HCL Digital Experience Container Update CF193 and on-permises CF196 and later release capabilities. The portlet allows an administrator to edit static theme resources in WebDAV without the use of a WebDAV client or tool.
  • Editing static theme resources and connecting with WebDAV
    After you create a new theme, you can edit the static resources that are associated with the theme.
  • Copying your theme
    Starting with Combined Cumulative Fix 08, you can now copy your theme by using the Theme Manager. You can also choose to copy your theme manually.
  • Dynamic content spots
    The static template files use dynamic content spots to reference JSP files or other dynamic resources. The dynamic resources are stored in a WAR file.
  • Layouts
    You can apply ready-use layouts to your portal pages, modify the existing layouts, or add your own custom layout to change how your pages display.
  • Skins
    You can apply ready-use skins to your portal pages, modify the existing skins, or add your own custom skin to change how your pages display.
  • Menus
    You can customize the appearance and performance of your menus.
  • Theme templates (theme.html)
    You can use static HTML to write portal themes. The static theme template is named theme.html.
  • Changing the theme logo
    You can change the theme logo to customize your portal site and rebrand it to reflect your business.
  • Customizing navigation
    Use dynamic content spots to determine what is displayed by Top, Primary, and Secondary navigation. Use the navigation.jsp file to map properties to the dynamic content spot IDs in the theme.html files. Rendering of the navigation is done with a single JSP file with <ul> and <li> tags.
  • Styles
    HCL Portal 8.5 provides a selection of ready-use styles that you can be applied to your portal pages. You can also modify the existing theme styles or add your own custom style to achieve the look that you want.
  • Configuring the portal theme and modules
    Themes and modules are configured through theme metadata properties and resource environment provider custom properties.
  • Expression language beans for accessing programming models
    Expression language (EL) beans are available for accessing WebSphere Programming models. These beans are accessed through the PortalBean represented in the global namespace by wp. The beans provide access to HCL Digital Experience models and associated classes.
  • Drag-and-drop
    Drag-and-drop uses HTML5 code to facilitate the layout of content.
  • Displaying messages in the status bar module
    You can display messages in the status bar to share important information with users.
  • Displaying the draft page ribbon
    The draft page ribbon is a strip of text that appears along both sides of a page that has a draft in the current project.
  • Adding jQuery to a theme
    The jQuery library is a JavaScript library. HCL Digital Experience includes a jQuery module for the jQuery core so you can use jQuery in a theme.
  • Tags used by the portal JSPs
    Learn about the most commonly used tags in the portal JSPs. Use these tags to modify the appearance and layout of the portal page.

Related information

Themes, profiles, and skins

Last update: August 30, 2022