Portal Channels: Create/Edit | WS.WebTV Documentation | WebTV Solutions

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What is a Portal?
An "advanced" Portal, like a "standard" portal, is a special page which displays a selection of WebTV content; however, advanced Portals are much more flexible since they rely on highly configurable Widgets to select the content being shown. Advanced Portals are not only ideal for creating a home page with a slider (similar to TV platforms like Netflix where you can also find a selection of videos per categories, etc.) but also other kinds of conrtent overviews.


Creating a Portal...

1. Goto to Channels & Pages...

2. Once on Channels & Pages...
To create a Portal click on "New..." button and select "Portal".
To edit an existing Portal click the corresponding "pencil" icon.


The creation and edition interfaces are very similar, however, the editing interface contains additional tabs, options and information.

3. The Properties Tab...
On the Properties tab is where you enter the basic Channel information:
• Title: Enter a descriptive Channel name, as short as possible. The title will be used on the menus.
• Slug: This is for friendly URLs. You can leave this field blank and the system will generate it automatically when saving.
• Description: (Optional) You can enter an introductory text here, if you wish. As you can see, we have included the popular TinyMCE editor that allows you to apply format to your content.
• Abstract/SEO Description: This description will be used for SEO.
• Tags/Keywords: Write some representative keywords for your Channel (comma-separated).
• Menu inclusion: Whether to include the Channel in any of the WebTV's menus.
• Template: Select one among the avilable templates.


Slider:
In this section you will find the image slider options
NOTE: Among the two ready-made templates you'll find one with a wide slider (named "big slider") and another (named "default") with a smaller slider which allows the sidebar to extend to the top.
• Add item type prefix to titles: Select whether you want the system to prefix the item type to the titles.
For example: "Video: Video title...", "News: News title..."


• Generation Mode:
     » Auto (Legacy): This is the old generation mode (for compatibility with versions prior to 1.7.5). The system will generate the slider using elements from the item list (from previous section).
      • Generate Slider from: Select which items should be used to generate the image slider. If you select "All" or "Clips+Channels", you can specify the total amount of items; otherwise the number of items on the item list will be used.

     » Auto (Selective): This mode lets you select the items to include in the slider.
      • Generate Slider from: Select the item types (which ones and how many - maximum amount) you want to include in the image slider.


Custom Slider Items:
In this section you can add custom items to the slider and specify if the items should be inserted before or after the automatically generated items. To add items simply click the "New Item" button.


Portal item list (Widgets):
This is what really sets "advanced" Portals apart from "standard" ones, instead of having predefined -fixed- content lists, you can add (and arrange the way you want) as many Widgets as desired to be included in the main body of your Portal. This allows, for example, including lists of content filtered by category, search term, status, and many other combinations.


All Widget types are available:

Para ver la lista completa de opciones de Widgets, y revisar algunos ejemplos, haga click aquí.

IMPORTANT: Widgets intended to appear in the main page body must have the following options set:
- Widget Zone = "-main-"
- Template = "Main Body"


How will the items appear in the page?
By default, item lists will be displayed as an horizontal, scrollable, carousel:


However, if instead of a carousel you prefer to display the items as normal lists then enter "nocarousel" (without quotes) for the CSS "class" of the Widget, like this:

...With the following result:


4. Done editing...
Once you are done editing the Channel, click the Save button.

5. Activating the new Channel...
New Channels are inactive by default. In order to activate the Channel, return to the Channel list and click the "gray light bulb" icon (it will turn to yellow when active).