The Channel Manager Channel is the via-the-uportal-gui means for initially publishing channels, or updating publishing information.
Stylesheet cache purge
The Channel Manager includes a link that, when clicked, causes uPortal to purge its XSLT stylesheet caches. Normally XSLT stylesheets are cached. If you update the stylesheet associated with a channel, that change won't take effect until portal restart. Bummer. You might not want to have to have a whole restart just to change the way a particular channel renders. Instead of waiting for a restart of the whole portal, you can click this link and uPortal will purge its stylesheet cache and re-read the XSLT the next time it is needed. This allows you to patch the stylesheets of a running portal without taking down the whole portal and to more quickly see the results of a change in a development environment. (You can also configure uPortal not to cache stylesheets at all, useful for quick feedback on changes in a development environment.)
Publishing a channel
Basic channel publication parameters
Some parameters are required for publication of all channels (and are handled by the uPortal framework). Other parameters are specific to a particular type of channel (and are handled by the particular channel). These are the basic parameters required for all channel publications:
Form prompt |
Meaning |
|---|---|
Channel functional name |
A string uniquely identifying the channel as published. Used by the framework and in URL composition for such features as URLs that take you directly to a particular channel regardless of whether it exists in your layout. |
Channel title |
name users will see when they subscribe to a channel. Need not be unique. One clever trick is to publish several channels with the same title but available to non-intersecting groups of users, with differing backing configuration. From the perspective of documentation, you can suggest all users subscribe to the "Campus News" channel, even though different users will actually be getting different channels, configured for their group. |
Channel name |
appears in the channel header when the channel is rendered. Adorns the channel's box. Need not be unique. In later uPortal 2.5.x releases the channel name can be overridden at runtime by the channel itself, making possible for example generic RSS readers that reflect what they are actually configured to render in their channel header bar. |
Channel description |
Optional. Provides additional information to a user about a channel. May be displayed in the channel subscription UI and in the channel publication UI. |
Channel timeout |
number of milliseconds a channel will attempt to render itself before the portal terminates that channel's rendering. |
What alternatives do I have to using this channel? What might I consider in choosing how I manage channels in my uPortal?
An alternative to using the Channel Manager is using channel publishing fragments and the pubchannel Ant task. Some people prefer to use this Channel Manager Channel because they like its GUI and workflow, find it a sane way to edit a running portal, etc. Other people prefer to use the Ant task and channel publishing fragments because they prefer to store and version channel publication in a file repository.