Understanding portal pages | Zoho Creator Help

Understanding portal pages

Notes This help page is for users in Creator 6. If you are in the older version (Creator 5), click here. Know your Creator version.

In a nutshell

Portal pages are the gateway for your portal users (external users) to access your application. It includes Sign in, Sign up, Create password, and Reset Password pages for your portal. Further, you can customize the appearance of portal pages by adjusting background images and colors for portal page and its forms, as well as modifying borders, alignment, and spacing.
Availability
  1. Portals can be accessed only in the paid plans of Creator. They are provided as add-ons in some plans while are included by default in others.
  2. Only the super admin and admins can access the portals.

1. Overview

Portal pages are organized page structures that house a portal through which you can sign up for a service, login, reset credentials, etc. They also display necessary information about the portal and provide input fields for the end-users to enter data such as their credentials. Mostly, these pages try to resonate with the template of their online service's purpose in both in displaying information and in design.

In Creator, a portal has four assets that are essential to your portal user 's lifecycle — the sign in, sign up, create password and reset password pages. Each portal page comprises of different rows and columns that include a portal form, relevant headings, description texts, background images, etc.

Zoho Creator offers a default and robust design for each of these pages, which you can further customize using the portal page designer. Check out the comprehensive steps for portal page customization to know more about the tailor-made properties it offers to design the pages.

1.1 See how it works


1.2 Use case

Say you've built a Zylker Automobile Resale application that resells pre-loved luxury cars. You've added a portal for the verified sellers who are willing to quote and put their cars on sale in the platform. You'll have separate portal pages for them to sign up to your service, for consecutive logins, and a page if they want to reset their password. Design these pages in a way that resonates with your business's goal. Using the portal page designer, set a background color that resonates with your existing application's design and add an image that pictographically explains the purpose of the page. You can also customize the login portal page to match the brand's theme by choosing color and text styles of the portal form, the input fields, and the buttons.

1.3 Navigation guide

You can find Portals under the DEPLOY section on the left-side pane once you sign in to your Creator account. After choosing the necessary portal previously created by you, the Page Customization tab can be chosen. From here, you can customize your portal pages.


1.4 Types of portal pages

Every portal created within the Zoho Creator application has four portal pages. They have been discussed in detail below:
Portal Page Type
Description
Sign Up
The page where portal users sign up for your Creator application's portal. In case your portal is private or restricted, your approval is required to complete the signup process.
Sign In
The page where the portal users will have to enter their credentials to access your Creator application's portal.
Reset Password
The page where the portal users can reset their password for accessing your Creator application's portal.
Create Password
The page where the portal users can create a password to access the Creator application's portal. Upon signing up, portal users will receive an email containing a link that directs them to this page to set their password.

1.5 Portal page customization

Zoho Creator offers an intuitive designer for customizing the design of your portal's sign in, sign up, and reset password pages. This sophisticated designer is common for all four portal pages and allows you to customize all their components.

Playing around with the designer helps you achieve maximum resemblance between your portal page and your application. Each portal page has a set of general properties, and properties specific to the components that the page holds. The three components (portal backdrop, Portal Column, and Portal Form) which are discussed in detail below.

Components of a Portal Page


A portal page has three components that contribute to the user interface design in different ways. They have properties of their own which can be utilized to design a very distinct user interface layout. The components are:
  1. Portal Backdrop - You can customize the portal backdrop by editing the page width, padding, background color, background image, and by adding more elements (headings, tables, spacers, etc)
  2. Portal Column - The portal column holds the portal form within it and has excess area that can be customized to suit your needs. You can choose to edit the alignment, spacing, background color, and background image.
  3. Portal Form - The portal form contains the input fields for the credentials. Every element inside the portal form can be customized such as the background color, the font of the buttons and field names, the color of the buttons, the color of the links when hovered over, etc.
Portal Backdrop
The properties specific to the portal backdrop helps you design the prefixed and custom elements of the portal page. These properties appear by default when a portal page is edited.


Property
Icon
Description
Page Width
  1. Default - The prefixed page width that has been affixed to portal pages uniformly.
Notes Note : Default value will be set to 100% capacity.
  1. Custom - The portal page's width can be customized according to your needs in pixels.
Notes Note : The pixel range within which you can adjust the page width is 790-1500.
Padding
The space between the content and the border of the portal page can be customized in pixels.
Notes
Note : The pixel range within which you can adjust the padding is 0-100.

Background Color
The background color of the portal page. The available options to choose from are:
  1. No Fill - Leaves the background blank.
  2. Preset Colors - The predefined color scheme from which the background color can be chosen.
  3. More Colors - The color palette from which a customized color can be chosen according to your needs. HEX and RGB codes can also be used to find a specific color.
Background Image
An image that fills and makes the background of your portal page. This can be uploaded using File manager or a Web URL.
  1. Once uploaded, it can be changed or deleted.



  2. It has to be uploaded in the .jpg or .png format and with a file size less than 5MB.



  3. Image Size - Determines the fit of the image in the portal page's background. Available options are:
    1. Auto
    2. Contain
    3. Cover
Elements
The elements column situated on the left side of the designer features predesigned elements. You can add them to your portal page's backdrop:
  1. Heading
  2. Paragraph
  3. Image
  4. Table
  5. Spacer 
The builder offers element-specific toolbars that allow you to customize their display value, appearance, insert system variables, and much more.
Undo & Redo
  1. Undo - Go back one step in the edition of the portal page.
  2. Redo - Repeat a step that was undone in the edition of the portal page.
Notes
Note : 
  1. You can also use the standard keyboard shortcuts to perform these operations.
  2. Upto 10 changes can be undone or redone.

Portal Column
The properties specific to the portal column that helps you customize the panel that encapsulates the portal form. They can be accessed by clicking on the portal column.


Property
Icon
Description
Alignment
The alignment of the portal form in the portal column. the available options are:
  1. Left
  1. Center
  1. Right

Spacing
The spacing between the margins of a portal column and the portal form that is situated inside it. The available options are:
  1. Left
  1. Top
  1. Right
  1. Bottom
Notes
Note : The pixel range between which you can set the spacing is 0-1400.
Background Color
It is the color of the portal column. The available options to choose from are:
  1. No Fill - Leaves the background blank.
  1. Preset Colors - The predefined color scheme from which the background color can be chosen.
  1. More Colors - The color palette from which a customized color can be chosen according to your needs. HEX and RGB codes can also be used to find a specific color.
Background Image
An image that fills and makes the background of your portal page. This can be uploaded using File manager or a Web URL.
  1. Once uploaded, it can be changed or deleted.
  2. It has to be uploaded in the .jpg or .png with a file size less than 5MB. 
  3. Image Size - Determines the fit of the image in the portal page's background. Available options are:
    1. Auto
    2. Contain
    3. Cover

Portal Form
The Form Customization properties specific to the portal form helps you design and customize the portal form fully. They can be accessed by clicking Form Customization or by directly selecting the portal form.

Property


Description
Background
The background color of the portal form.
Border
  1. Color - The color of the portal form's border.
  1. Style - The borderline design can be chosen from:
    1. continuous line

    2. dashed line
    3. dotted line
  1. Width - The thickness of the border that runs around the portal form.
Notes
Note: The pixel range within which you can customize the border width is 0-20.


Shadow
  1. Shadow Color - The color of the portal form's shadow.
  1. X - The thickness of the shadow on the X-axis.
  1. Y - The thickness of the shadow on the Y-axis.
  1. Blur - The extent to shadow needs to be blurred.
  1. Spread - The extent to which the shadow needs to be spread.
Typography
  1. Font Family - The font that will be applied throughout the portal form. A list of 23 font families are available in the dropdown.
  1. Title Text Color - The color in which the title text needs to be displayed.
  1. Body Text Color - The color in which the body text needs to be displayed.
Field Input
  1. Text Color - The color of the text that the end-user enters in the field.
  1. Placeholder Color - The color of the default placeholder of the input field.
  1. Background Color - The color of the input field box.
  1. Border Color - The color of the borderline of the input field box.
Notes
Note : These properties can be defined for both, their default display, and their appearance when hovered upon. This can be done by switching between the Default and Hover tabs.
Button
  1. Text Color - The color of the text that is displayed on the button.
  2. Background Color - The filled color of the buttons placed within the portal form.
  3. Border Color - The color of the borderline of the buttons placed within the portal form.
Notes
Note : The properties can be defined for both, their default display, and their appearance when hovered upon. This can be done by switching between the Default and Hover tabs.

Link
Default Text Color - The color of the text that is displayed on links placed within the portal form.
Underline - The link text can be displayed as underlined or plain.
Notes
Note : The properties can be defined for both, their default display, and their appearance when hovered upon. This can be done by switching between the Default and Hover tabs.

2. Points to note

  1. You can make row and column-wise customizations to every element present in the portal page. The available properties are:
    1. Row - Spacing, Fill Color, Edit HTML, Border
    2. Column - Fill Color, Border
  2. The changes you make in the designer are automatically saved.
  3. You can set the width of all the columns in the portal page by dragging its borders.
  1. Customize Portal Pages
  2. Understand Portals
  3. Understand Portal Users

What's next
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What's next
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Learn more about portal and its users.