Customizing the Portal as the administrator- Digital Transformation with IBM API Connect
Since there are so many tutorials already available in the IBM Documentation on API Connect on how to customize the portal user interface, this section will focus on some customizations not covered in the documentation, but that are beneficial.
Those customizations are as follows:
- Removing blogs and forums if not needed
- Adding backup administrators to allow customization using the administration role
- Adding new themes envisioned by your marketing teams
- Updating the Welcome Banner
We start with learning how to remove blogs and forums.
Removing blogs and forums
Not every organization desires to offer blogs or forums to its consumers – for instance, if you are using API Connect for on-premise utilization between the internal departments of an organization. So, if you want to disable the links to the blogs and forums you can do that with just a few quick clicks. Figure 15.4 shows the admin user logged on to the portal.
Figure 15.4 – The administrator view
You can see that there are some additional menu links for Workbench and Manage. You will be using the Manage menu to begin your customization.
Reminder
The admin user is established when the provider organization creates a Catalog and assigns a new portal instance. When that occurs, an email is sent to establish the password for the admin account. You use this account to perform customization on the portal.
In Figure 15.5, you can see the main menu for the Developer Portal. You will be removing the menu options for Blogs and Forums.
Figure 15.5 – Main menu showing Blogs and Forums
You’ll begin by logging on as the admin for the particular Catalog instance of the Developer Portal. Once logged on follow these steps:
- Navigate to Manage | Structure | Menus | Main navigation. Figure 15.6 shows the displayed screen:
Figure 15.6 – Removing Blogs and Forums
As you can see, it shows the menu items displayed in the menu. You’ll want to disable Blogs and Forums.
2. To disable the inclusion of Blogs and Forums simply uncheck those items as shown in Figure 15.6. This will remove them from the menu but not remove them from the system.
3. Once done, click the Save button and click Back to Site in the upper left corner.
When the screen returns, you will notice that Blogs and Forums are no longer displayed.
Figure 15.7 – An updated menu without Blogs and Forums
Having a backup administrator account is important because you don’t always want to use the default admin user to perform customizations. You’ll learn how to do that next.