URL mapping

Portal administrators can create constant URLs and map them to specific portal pages. When administrators create constant URLs, they define human-readable names for the URLs that are easy to remember and retrieve.

About this task

You can publish your self defined URLs externally and thereby make them available to portal users. For example, a computer store that uses the portal could create a user defined URL products/hardware/laptops for the page on which their laptop product line is advertised. This URL can be appended to a portal prefix that was defined by the store, for example http://www.fancy_xyz_computers.example.com/wps/portal/products/hardware/laptops.

Clicking on such a mapped URL from outside of the portal takes the user to the required portal page. Users can also combine several mapped contexts into the representation of a full valid URL, type that fully mapped URL into the address field of the browser, and thereby get to the portal page.

Note: Clicking on a mapped URL from outside the portal takes the user straight to the required page in the case of pages which are accessible without login to the portal. In the case of pages which require login the user is prompted for user ID and password. After successful login the portal takes the user directly to the required page. However, this works only if portal security is enabled. Otherwise the portal redirects the user to the portal Welcome page.

For more information about URL mapping see the following topics.

  • The administrative model of URL mapping
    The mapped URLs are arranged in hierarchical trees of contexts. A tree starts with a root context at the top level, and each context can have several child contexts. The full URL of a context is created by concatenating the labels of all contexts that lie on the path from the root to the given child context.
  • Working with URL mapping
    As an administrator, you can perform the tasks related to URL mapping as described in the following topics.
  • Restrictions to names for URL mapping contexts
    The following restrictions apply to the names that you can give to URL mapping contexts.
  • Parent topic: Configuring portal behavior