"Alias" or "alternate" Portal URL/URI?

Question

Hi,
I have a need to be able to access my portal application (named "app") using two different URLs (or more precisely two different URIs).
Normally, I access my application using http://my.host.com:7001/app.portal. I want to also be to access it using (for example) http://my.host.com:7001/jim.portal.
Doing some testing, I think that I was able to accomplish this by simply making a copy of the "app.portal" file and renaming the copied file to "jim.portal", but I'm wondering if this is the correct/best way to accomplish this? Also, doing this, are there any "unintended consequences" that I need to be aware of?
Thanks,
Jim

Answer 1

Chris,
If you're interested, you can try this:
- Assuming that your .PORTAL file is, say, foo.portal, make a copy of it in the same directory, then
- Rename the copy to, say, foo1.portal.
You should now be able to access the same portal using either http://my.host.com:7001/foo.portal or http://my.host.com:7001/foo1.portal.
You mentioned "other application servers". I had the impression that duplicating the <module> in the application.xml would work in other app servers also. I think when I first opened the case with BEA, they said it should work with WebLogic also, but I got an email yesterday that I think is saying that it doesn't work. I've sent a response back asking them to clarify exactly what they were trying to tell me.
I think that the reason that they originally thought that it was working with WebLogic was that they were testing with something other than a .PORTAL file, possibly doing a test with just a .JSP file that they had placed in the document root. From my testing, you can access .HTML and .JSP, etc. files using the <module> alias/context root, but you can't get to .PORTALs.
You can try this too. Just put a .JSP in your 'real' document root directory, then add a <module> with a different context root (e.g., "foo"), and you should be able access it using both http://my.host.com:7001/my.jsp and using http://my.host.com:7001/foo/my.jsp.
BTW, yes, I did notice that the alias is not showing up in WebLogic console, but be careful not to start up Workshop. From my testing, if you start up Workshop with the extra <module> in application.xml, it gets kind of confused, and starts adding stuff into config.xml, etc. I found that out the hard way, and had to spend some time cleaning things up afterwards :(.
I put an email out to our development group asking whether they deploy the single file portal or whether they are using streamed rendering. I'm hoping that they'll come back saying that it's the latter.
Thanks again,
Jim
P.S. In case you're wondering why I'm still pursuing this if the .PORTAL copy technique works: The reason that I'm still trying to track this down is that I don't UNDERSTAND why copying the .PORTAL file works, and it seems like a kind of non-standard (and probably unsupported) way of doing things, from an app server standpoint.
Message was edited by: Jim L
jimcpl
Message was edited by:
jimcpl