Recently we discussed the Experience Definition Debug page. It’s pretty straight-forward: turn on debug mode in Portal Administration, then click the “Show Debug Messages” link that shows up in the WCI header.

But, what if you’ve customized the portal navigation and aren’t using the out-of-the-box header bar? We’ve gotchya covered – there are actually three ways this can be done.

Add the Adaptive Tags to your own header
The following code comes from \imageserver \plumtree\portal \private\pagelayouts \basepagelayout.html. You can stick this code into any header (or footer, or portlet) to get the Debug link to show up, and it will only show up for the appropriate users.

    <pt:core.comment><!-- DCA - get the Rules Debug link; if we don't have access to the rules debug page, the variable won't exist --></pt:core.comment>
    <pt:ptdata.rulesdebugdata pt:id="rulesDebugLink" />
    <pt:logic.existexpr pt:data="rulesDebugLink" pt:key="canAccessRulesDebug"/>
    <pt:logic.if pt:expr="$canAccessRulesDebug">
        <pt:logic.iftrue>
            <pt:core.comment><!-- DCA - there should only be 1 --></pt:core.comment>
            <pt:logic.foreach pt:data="rulesDebugLink" pt:var="link">
                <li><pt:core.html pt:tag="a" target="_blank" href="$link.url"><pt:core.html pt:tag="img" src= "pt://images/plumtree/portal/private/img/icon_subportal_rule.gif" alt="$link.title"/></pt:core.html><pt:core.html pt:tag="a" target="_blank" href="$link.url"><pt:logic.value pt:value="$link.title"/></pt:core.html></li> &amp;nbsp;|
            </pt:logic.foreach>
        </pt:logic.iftrue>
    </pt:logic.if>

Access the URL
The debug Messages page is available at /portal /server.pt? open=space &name=RulesDebugMSGAS. You can just drop that URL in there and the browser should display the debug page if you have access.

Use the MemoryDebug space
Finally, the portal session object stores this information so that it can be accessed through the MemoryDebug page we’ve discussed before. Just flip your URL to /portal /server.pt /debug /memory and you’ll see something that’s a little less readable, but still a functional alternative to the above two methods:

One caveat to all of these methods is if you have Community-based rules. Because sometimes the debug page itself applies its own URL for the rules, in some cases that means you’re no longer in any communities, so that could mean you get a false-negative for that condition. Your mileage may vary.

In Plumtree they were called Subportals. In Aqualogic the name was changed to Experience Definitions, and they continued to evolve in WebCenter Interaction with the introduction of Adaptive Layouts.

Experience Definitions are useful constructs in the portal that allow you to customize the header/footer, navigation, and Adaptive Layouts based on Experience Rules – which can be applied based on the host IP, community, user/group, or user-agent header. So you can apply different rules based on any of those criteria and heavily customize the experience based on any of those conditions.

An useful feature that was introduced with Experience Definitions was the “Debug Mode”, which can be accessed from Administration -> Select Utility -> Portal Settings -> User Settings Manager:

When this option is selected, a new link for “Show Debug Messages” is shown in the standard topbar, or in the out-of-the-box Adaptive Layout:

From this link, you can see the “Rules Debugging Messages”, which explains each rule, whether it matched the condition, and how long the evaluation took: