Article 010
Force.com Customer Portal Setup Guide
1. INTRODUCTION TO FORCE.COM
If you want to add new pages or customize existing pages in your community, you can use Force.com Sites . With Force.com , you can create branded, publicly available pages such as landing or marketing pages, and private custom pages that only community members can access.
What we can achieve using Force.com
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We can create public, branded pages that anyone can access.
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Leverage Visualforce to create private pages that you can add as a tab within your community.
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Write your own controllers, or extensions to controllers, using Apex code.
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Create custom login or self-registration pages.
2. GUIDE TO CREATE FORCE.COM CUSTOMER COMMUNITY
2.1 SET UP FORCE.COM SITE
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From Setup, enter Sites in the Quick Find box, then select Sites.
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Register a custom Force.com domain for your organization.
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Create and configure your site.
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Develop and use Visualforce pages for your site, use or hide standard pages, and customiize or replace out-of-box error pages. Associate these pages with your sites.
2.2 ENABLE A PORTAL WITH FORCE.COM SITE
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Enable the portal for login using the following steps:
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From Setup, enter Customer Portal Settings in the Quick Find box, then select CustomerPortal Settings.
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If you have not enabled your portal, select Enable Customer Portal and click Save.
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Click Edit for the portal you want to modify.
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Configure the portal as follows:
1. Select the Login Enabled checkbox.
2. Select a user for the Administrator field.
3. Optionally, set the Logout URL. If this is not set, users are taken to the site home page on logout.
4. Click Save.
If you are using a Customer Portal and want to allow self-registration, follow these steps:
From Setup, enter Customer Portal Settings in the Quick Find box, then select Customer Portal Settings.
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Click Edit for the portal you want to associate with your Force.com site.
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Configure the Customer Portal as follows:
1. Select Self-Registration Enabled.
2. Select Customer Portal User for both the Default New User License and Default New User Profilefields. Depending on your portal license, you may want to select a different profile for the Default New User Profile field.
3. Select User for the Default New User Role field.
4. Click Save.
Associate the site pages with the default portal users:
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From Setup, enter Customer Portal Settings in the Quick Find box, then select CustomerPortal Settings, or from Setup, enter Partners in the Quick Find box, then select Settings.
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Click the name of the portal that you want to associate with your site.
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Click the name of each profile associated with your portal users and do the following:
1. Scroll down to the Enabled Visualforce Page Access section and click Edit.
2. Add the appropriate public site pages to the Enabled Visualforce Pages list. This allows portal users with that profile to view these pages.
Associate your site with the login-enabled portal:
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From Setup, enter Sites in the Quick Find box, then select Sites.
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Click the site label of the site you want to configure.
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Click Login Settings.
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Click Edit.
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From the Enable Login For drop-down list, select the name of the portal where you want to allow login.
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Select the Change Password Page.
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Click Save.
For sites with Ideas, Answers, Chatter Answers, you must make the zone visible in the portal and enable the IdeasHome or AnswersHome page for the site. To associate the zone with one or more portals:
1. From Setup, search for one of the following in the Quick Find box.
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Ideas Zones
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Chatter Answers Zones
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Answers Zones
Click Edit next to the zone you want to make public.
From the Portal drop-down list, select the portal to use for this zone. You can choose to show the zone in all portals.
2.3 SETTING UP VISUALFORCE PAGES ON SITE
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Now you can add multiple visualforce pages for site by Moving a VFP from Available VFP Multi Select picklist to Enable VFP picklist.
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Then the url of the vfp will look like this,
https://url-of-your-domain-developer-edition.ap2.force.com/CustomVFP/