It is recommended that you use resource bundles for all of strings that will be displayed to the end user. This is called 'localising' your application.
The tutorial comes with two sample resource files in English and French. Lets look at the English version:
TOP_TITLE=Welcome to JPortal, the Jetspeed Tutorial BOTTOM_SUPPORT_MSG=Free Support
The first string, TOP_TITLE, replaces a resource string already defined in Jetspeed. The second string, BOTTOM_SUPPORT_MSG is a new string that is referenced in the bottom-jportal.vm file.
Referencing localised strings in Velocity templates is accomplished with the localisation global tool, with a rather odd name of $l10n. It stands for the word 'localisation', where the 10 middle letters are cleverly (sic) represented by the number 10.
Any string in the resource bundle can be referenced as shown below:
<td align="center">
<h2>$l10n.TOP_TITLE</h2>
</td>
In this tutorial, we will change the bottom navigation defined in the last tutorial, to use a localised string:
<td align="center">
<a href="mailto:$config.getString("mail.support")">$l10n.BOTTOM_SUPPORT_MSG</a>
</td>
In the JPortalJetspeed.properties, setup your email support account:
mail.support=support@bluesunrise.com