In the settings area of the home site the user can personalize OLAT. This means language, font size (three different CSS for small, medium, large), instant messaging preferences and personal attributes like birth date. A language change will only be activated at the next login. See also

Most user attributes are stored within the o_user table. This unflexible design will be refactored somewhen to use generic properties so be able to extend the properties as needed. Currently adding attributes means adding getters and setters in the user class and adding table fields to the user database table.

In WEB-INF/olat_config.xml in the section org.olat.user.UserModule it is possible to define which user attributes can be edited by the user. The administrator can always edit all user attributes in the administration site.

The home site has a portal entry page. The portal can be configured. This means the portal elements, so-called portlets, can be moved around in the portal and portlets can be activated / deactivated. The state is persisted for each user in the GUI preferences. See Section 2.2.9, “GUI preferences” for more info about this.

The portal, the portlets and the default portal configuration is defined in WEB-INF/olat_portals.xml . In the PortletFactory part all known portlets are defined giving them an identifyer called name. In the second section, the PortalFactory, two portals are defined: the homeportal and the guestportal

Every portal has a map called portletsConfigurations. In this map all portlets allowed in this portal are listed. The key identifies them within the portal. The values are portlet configuration values that are handed over to the portlet when launched. One special value is called portletName which referres to the name of the portlet defined in the PortletFactory.

Every portal has a list called portalColumns. This is the default list of activated portlets used whenever the user has no personalization made. The list contains lists (the portal columns) which contain references to the portlets configurations above.

Every user has a personal space to store files. In the users personal folder two virtual subfolders are present, the private and the public folder.

The private folder is only visible and accessable to the owning user. The public folder can be accessed by all OLAT users using the search workflow also located in the home site. Other users have only read only access to other users public folders. To share data in both directions one can use the project groups which does also feature a folder.

The personal folder can be mounted using WebDAV, see next chapter on this.

Every user has his own visiting card to expose more or less of his personal data to all registred OLAT users. He can upload an image and enter a text in Wiki syntax to appear on his card. In addition his public folder is visible to other users und he can be contacted by email via the contact form. If the user posts a message to the forum, the uploaded image will be integrated into the message header. Via the usersearch form a user, respectively his visiting card can be found.

The visiting card should be embedded as link wherever more information on a person should be displayed like for example in a forum post. To generate such a link together with the users portrait foto use the DisplayPortraitController.