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Course Customization Structure for Business Skills Courses on a SkillPort Site

In a SkillPort site, the course customization files are located (by default) in the <Content>/Web/Skins directory of your installation. During Skins installation, the SkillSoft Content Installer creates a file named sample_courseinfo.properties at the root of the Skins directory. This file is an example of a courseinfo.properties file. If there is no Courseinfo.properties in this location, you can create one based on this example.

Courseinfo.properties files are also located in the folder of every skin in the Skins directory. If you want to customize a specific course on your site, manually create a <courseid>.properties file in the root of the Skins directory for every course that you want to individually customize.

When launched, the SkillSoft Course Player looks in the <install_dir>/Web/CourseInfo directory for course information files, in the following order. The SkillSoft Course Player uses the first file it finds:

  • <courseid>.Properties
  • courseinfo.properties

Setting Up Course Customization Using the COURSEINFO Parameter

By default, SkillPort creates the Skins directory that holds the customization files under the Web directory of your content installation. The Skins directory does not need to reside in your content directory, it can reside anywhere on your server. You can use a single Skins directory for multiple SkillPort sites as long as they are on the same server.

In order specify another location for the Skins directory, do the following:

  1. Open in the lms_parameters table in the company database of a company that you want to specify this skins location.
  2. Set the value of the skin_url parameter to the URL of the directory.

    This configuration is optimal for servers hosting multiple SkillPort installations with a single content site. The <value> is the COURSEINFO parameter sent to the SkillSoft Course Player and is set for all courses for that company.

    Example:

    skin_url http://myserver/skins/courseinfo

  3. Repeat Step 1 and Step 2 for each company that you want to set up using this skins directory.

Skins Flowchart for Business Skills Courses

The following flowchart demonstrates the process the SkillSoft Course Player uses to determine what skin to use for a Business Skills course.