Patent ID: 8065415

Claim:
A method for creating an administrative tool for a portal, the method comprising: providing an administrative interface to administer the portal, wherein the administrative interface includes a server page, a tag library, a page flow system and a management application program interface (API), wherein the server page, in response to a request from the administrative interface to administer the portal, transmits commands through one of the tag library and the page flow system to the management application program interface (API), and wherein the management API processes the request to administer the portal, and wherein the portal is stored on a computer readable storage medium; wherein the management API includes a control facade configured to receive the commands from one of the tag library, the page flow system and the server page, wherein the control facade includes functional modules to perform administrative functions, and wherein the administrative functions are used to administer the portal in response to the request from the administrative interface, wherein the administrative functions include one of managing a portal instance, modifying a portal instance, modifying a portal definition, creation and removal of portals, portlets, books, pages, portal content and creation and modification of user and group permissions, wherein the management API allows external software components to manage the portal using the administrative functions of the management API; administering the portal by generating an interface component at the portal, wherein the interface component is configured to invoke a function in the management API through at least one of a page flow component and a tag, and wherein the page flow component is located in the page flow system and includes groups of files that implement the interface component at the portal, and wherein the page flow component validates invocation of the administrative function from the interface component, handles flow possibilities resulting from the invocation including specifying a resulting page to transition to, and invokes the administrative function at the management API, and the tag is located in the tag library and stores groupings of administrative functions and utilizes the management API to implement the groupings of administrative functions, and associating the interface component with the administrative function in the management API that administers the portal, said interface component configured to invoke creation of a portal instance; generating the portal instance in response to the administrative function.