Introduction

By default, BlueMind lets you customize the homepage logo.

To replace the default homepage by a customized page, you have to write an HPS extension.

The process shown here is just as an example.

After an update, you may have to adapt it to the new BlueMind version.

If this extension is present in your installation, we strongly recommend that you test its behavior on a pre-production platform using the version of BlueMind you are planning to use in production.

Prerequisite

A test installation of BlueMind in the latest available version (3.5.7 minimum).

Principle

To edit the BlueMind homepage and replace it by your own custom version, you have to write an HPS extension that will overload the official homepage's template and resources.

Initialising the extension

Naming the extension 

You have to give your extension a name. This name can use the [a-z] characters and "." (period).

In this document, we've chosen to name the extension my.sample.loginpage, make sure you replace it by the name you have chosen for your extension.

Creating a structure for the extension

Connect as the root user on the BlueMind test installation, then:

  1. Run the following commands:

    mkdir /root/my.sample.loginpage
cd /root/my.sample.loginpage
mkdir META-INF templates web-resources

  2. Create a file named /root/my.sample.loginpage/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF, with the following content:

    Manifest-Version: 1.0
Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
Bundle-Name: my.sample.loginpage
Bundle-SymbolicName: my.sample.loginpage
Bundle-Version: 1.0.0
Bundle-Vendor: bluemind.net
Fragment-Host: net.bluemind.webmodules.loginapp
Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment: JavaSE-1.8

    Remember to adapt the Bundle-Name and Bundle-SymbolicName lines according to the name you have chosen for your extension.

Defining your homepage

The homepage essentially contains two types of data:

  • the page's HTML code in a template
  • the page's resources (images, CSS...)

HTML Code

The page's HTML code has to be put into the file named templates/login.xml. BlueMind will analyze this template file and dynamically populate it with data.

The  <body> section of the template has to contain the authentication form's original code – the latest version of this code can be found on la the login.xml page of our git repository. Copy the following sections:

  1. From  <#if authErrorMsg??> to </#if> (including tags)
  2. The actual form's part of the code: from <form> to </form> (including tags)

In addition, the template's </body> tag has to be preceded by:

${jsRuntime}

Resources

Homepage resources -- images, CSS sheets... -- have to be placed into the web-resources page.

You can reference the resources from this repository into the HTML code. E.g. to insert the web-resources/sample.jpg resource from the templates/login.xml template:

<img src="sample.jpg>Sample image</img>

If you create a folder structure, use the relative notation to reference the folders, always with web-resources as the root folder. E.g. for a CSS sheet in /web-ressources/css/style.css:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css" />

Note: the folder structure doesn't start with '/', which would point to the website's root. 

You can find default resources in our git repository: https://forge.bluemind.net/stash/projects/BM/repos/bluemind-public/browse/ui/webmodules/net.bluemind.webmodules.loginapp/web-resources?at=refs%2Fheads%2Frelease%2F3.5

Building and installing the extension

Log in as root on the BlueMind test installation, then:

  1. Build the extension:

    cd /root/my.sample.loginpage
/usr/lib/jvm/bm-jdk/bin/jar cvfm /root/my.sample.loginpage_1.0.0.jar META-INF/MANIFEST.MF .

  2. Install the extension:

    cd /usr/share/bm-hps/extensions
mkdir my.sample.loginpage
mv /root/my.sample.loginpage_1.0.0.jar my.sample.loginpage/

  3. Restart the HPS service:

    /etc/init.d/bm-hps stop
rm -rf /var/lib/bm-hps
/etc/init.d/bm-hps start

Then log into BlueMind, your custom homepage should be displayed instead of the standard BlueMind homepage.

If your homepage isn't displayed, force-refresh your browser by holding the shift key while reloading the page.

Using your web browser in private mode also helps prevent possible cache issues.

Notes

Example

The code for the my.sample.loginpage plugin described in this documentation is available on the website: https://github.com/bluemind-net/loginapp-plugin-sample/tree/master/my.sample.loginpage

To test it:

  1. Download the extension here: https://github.com/bluemind-net/loginapp-plugin-sample/raw/master/build/my.sample.loginpage_1.0.0.jar
  2. Refer to steps 2 and 3 of the Building and installing the extension paragraph.

The contents of the extension can be edited using software that supports the zip compression format (e.g. winzip).

You can replace the templates/login.xml template file, and add or delete resources in the web-resources folder.

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