Content management

Web applications

Portofino offers the framework and the components to create interactive web applications that your users will love.

With the "application wizard" you can connect to an existing database and let the system create for you a set of pages, forms, and calendars to access your data.

But this is just a starting point: you can customize and improve your application with a vast range of features that are available out of the box.

The perfect tool for your intranet applications.

Websites

Pages are organized in a hierarchical tree, so you can add, delete, move or copy pages anywhere in the tree.

Pages can contain a single content or many contents visually arranged on the page. Contents can be static or dynamic.

You can make your website look good and be functional at the same time.

Rich text editing

Page contents can be edited on-line. Simply visit a page, click on "edit", make your changes, and save.

You can also apply formatting, link other pages and embed images in the text.

Attachments

You can attach files to your pages and offer them for download to your users. Attaching a document or an image is a matter of a few clicks.

Tabs, sidebar and breadcrumbs

A tabs bar, a sidebar and breadcrumbs make navigation easy for your users. Finding where you are and where you can go is never a problem.

Controls on the page

As a developer or editor, you will often want to make small changes to your application. If you are visiting a page and you want to edit it, move it, set its permissions and settings, or improve it in any way, you don't have to go very far. All the controls are there on the page, immediately accessible.

Drag and drop layout

If your page contains many components, you will want to control their position within the page. Simply click on "edit page layout" and you can drag-and-drop the components into the best position.

Page permissions

With permissions you decide the roles and responsibilities within your application. Set the access level (view, edit, develop or deny) for each page.

To make life easier, the rules you set for a page can be applied to all the pages underneath. This is called permission inheritance. Alternatively you can have a page with its own set of rules for maximum flexibility.

A handy "Test a user" feature allows you to check what a certain user (e.g., anonymous) can do on a page.

Pages on the file system

All pages are stored on the filesystem. Each page is a folder and the folder structure reflects the URL structure - it can't be easies than that.

You can manage your application using your favourite off-line tools, e.g., html editors. Versioning using standard VCS systems is straightforward.

Also no database is required to set up a simple website project.

This approach ensures performance and flexibility.

Templating

Having a consistent look of the pages is important. With page templates you can decide the overall layout, the branding, the navigation elements (tabs, sidebar, breadcrumbs) that fit your needs.

There can be more than one page template in an application. So if you want a certain look for the intranet pages that is different from the public pages, you can do that.

Creating new pages

A page has a type, a url fragment, a title, a description, and a position relative to the other pages in the tree. This is all you need to enter to create a new page.

Moving and copying pages

Moving or copying a page is very easy. Click on the move or copy buttons, select the destination position and press ok.

Page ordering, activating, and embedding

Pages can be sorted to appear in the right order in a tab bar or sidebar. 

By default, pages are all active but if you want a certain page to be disabled you can de-activate it with a flag.

Also, you can decide if a page is displayed on its own url or embedded in its parent page as a page component.