Developer Portal best practices for administrators
You are recommended to follow the best practices that are listed in the next sections, to ensure you get the best experience from the Developer Portal appliance.
General advice
You must treat the Developer Portal as an appliance, and execute only the Linux operations that are described in the documentation or are advised elsewhere by IBM.
To configure the server, you must use the commands that are provided in the
documentation, such as set_smtp, and set_ntp. Do not edit the
Linux configuration files directly.
For a list of all the available commands, see Useful Developer Portal CLI commands.
Configuration advice
You should take a full backup before doing anything you're unsure of, to supplement the regular backups that you already take. For information about backups, see Backing up and restoring the Developer Portal.
You must always use the same Fix Pack level on all of the Developer Portal servers and the API Manager servers. The Fix Pack level is the last number on the version string, for example, the number 4 in version 5.0.8.4.
The Operating System timezone for the Developer Portal should be set to UTC, and the same NTP server should be used by all members of the API Connect deployment.
Actions to avoid
You must not perform the following actions unless specifically advised to do so by IBM.
- Patching Drupal modules that are already included with the product.
- Installing custom modules from the command line. If you're installing custom modules or themes, you should install them by using the Developer Portal UI to ensure they are saved into the right directory, and they have the correct permissions. For more information, see Installing additional modules.
- Deleting items from the Developer Portal core configuration. For example, don't delete any fields that are defined by the Developer Portal; fields can be hidden from specific view modes if required, but don't delete the field itself.
- Updating Drupal modules in the Developer Portal UI. If a module update is needed, it's provided in a Developer Portal iFix. An iFix can be requested by raising a service request, see IBM Support.
- Editing any of the Nginx configuration.
- Installing and/or running any other software products on the Developer Portal server.
- Modifying any user permissions on the server.
- Making any changes to the SSH configuration.
- Making any changes to the Developer Portal database, or accessing the database directly, unless under the instruction of IBM Support.
Related information
For general IBM® API Connect best practices, see IBM API Connect best practices.