Post-Deployment Actions

The Geoportal that is implemented out-of-the-box is meant to be a site starter with default values. It is strongly recommended that all users make certain modifications to their Geoportal instance prior to going live on a production system. Some of the most important post-deployment actions are provided below.

• Customize the User Interface for your Organization's Look and Feel
• Modify Default Usernames and Passwords
• Schedule Synchronization
• Register the Geoportal Sitemap with Search Engines
• Expose the Geoportal to OpenSearch
• Update the CS-W Service Provider Information

Customize the User Interface for your Organization's Look and Feel

It is important to customize your geoportal to distinguish it from the default look and feel, and integrate with the other web pages in your organization. For detailed information on customizing the geoportal user Interface, please refer to the section on Geoportal Customizations.

Modify Default Usernames and Passwords

If you followed the installation guide closely during your Geoportal setup, you are likely using default usernames and passwords as outlined in the installation guide or defaulted in the gpt.xml configuration file. If you do not change the defaults, your Geoportal is vulnerable for manipulation by anyone who also has a Geoportal instance, since they are knowledgeable about the default username and password settings. It is therefore strongly recommended that once your Geoportal goes into production, you reset the default usernames and password. It is also recommended to encrypt passwords in your Geoportal configuration files. To encrypt passwords please see Encryption Concepts below.

Schedule Synchronization

A production geoportal likely will connect to other metadata repositories for synchronizing resources in the geoportal catalog. When you deploy the geoportal, it is important to make a plan for which repositories will be synchronized, how often, and what other network resources should be registered and synchronized. See How to Publish Resources for more information on synchronizing resources.

Register the Geoportal Sitemap with Search Engines

The Geoportal extension automatically provides a sitemap file for your organization's deployed Geoportal. A sitemap is an xml file that shows the structure of a website, and provides additional information on the pages within the site. If a sitemap is submitted to search engines - such as Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft - users may be able to find records from the Geoportal by using these search engines directly. Sitemap.org has a helpful page on how to submit your sitemap. You can see your default geoportal sitemap by pasting the following in a web browser, replacing the host with your web server's name, port with your servlet engine port number, and contextPath with the name of your geoportal web application (geoportal by default):

http://host:port/contextPath/sitemap

Note:

Only resources that have their access level set to public are included in the sitemap.

After accessing this url, register the response with a search engine of your choice. You can modify the following sitemap settings in the \\geoportal\WEB-INF\classes\gpt\config\gpt.xml file. More details for each of these parameters are found in the comments within the gpt.xml file.

• sitemap.baseUrl: the base URL for sitemap files
• sitemap.documentUrlPattern: the URL pattern referencing documents within a sitemap
• sitemap.urlsPerIndexFile: the maximum number of sitemap files to be referenced within the sitemap index file
• sitemap.urlsPerSitemapFile: the maximum number of documents to be referenced within an individual sitemap file
• sitemap.namespaceUri: the sitemap namespace URI, default = http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
• sitemap.changefreg: the change frequency to be listed per document reference
• sitemap.priority: the priority to be listed per document reference, 0.0 -> 1.0

Expose the Geoportal to OpenSearch

The Geoportal is exposed through OpenSearch, which means that certain browsers - such as Mozilla Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 - will support searching the Geoportal as a search provider directly from the browser. For more information on Geoportal OpenSearch, see Add the Geoportal Search to a List of Search Providers. Because users may have many search providers registered with their browser, the name of your Geoportal search provider should be distinguishable. To change the name that will appear in the list of search providers from the default, do the following:

1. Navigate to the \\geoportal\WEB-INF\classes\gpt\resources folder.
2. Open the gpt.properties file in a text editor.
3. Find the line that reads OpenSearch resources.
4. In the catalog.openSearch.shortName parameter, change the associated Geoportal Search text to read something specific to your organization. This is the name that will appear in the list of search providers in the browser interface by default. For example, a good shortName parameter may include the name of your organization.
5. You can also change the text associated with the catalog.openSearch.description parameter to match a description specific to your organization.
6. Save the gpt.properties file.
7. Restart the geoportal web application.

Update the CS-W Service Provider Information

When you first access your Geoportal's CS-W service through the GetCapabilities request - sample shown below - you will see a list of the capabilities of the service.

http://serverName:portNumber/geoportal/csw/discovery?Request=GetCapabilities&Service=CSW&Version=2.0.2

You will also see information about the service, such as what organization is providing the service and keywords. To customize this to reference your organization, navigate to the \\geoportal\WEB-INF\classes\gpt\metadata directory on your Geoportal server and edit the cswCapabilities.xml file accordingly. Restart the geoportal web application, and the next time you access the GetCapabilities request, you should see your updated provider information in the response.