This document discusses customizing Liferay Portal for business needs. It provides an overview of Liferay and common customization scenarios. It then discusses the key environments, tools, and techniques needed for customization, including the Plugins SDK, Liferay IDE, and Developer Studio. Common customization decisions are outlined relating to information architecture, content, sites, roles and authentication, workflows and more. Finally, it provides an example of a content-centric customization focusing on basic techniques and methodology.

1. Customizing Liferay Portal for Business
Needs
@shubhamnagar
Director – InfoAxon Technologies
1

2. Discussion Points
Brief Introduction
Understanding Liferay Environments,
about Liferay
Customization Scenarios Tools &
Techniques
needed
Key Customization Live Demo Action
Approaches

3. Liferay – A Brief Introduction
Horizontal Portal Platform to Develop “Web Experiences”
Enterprise “Container”
Online Application for Web
Employee
Community Integration platform
Intranet &
Centric Social Platform and diverse
Extranet
Simple Web Network
Platform experiences
Site with Platform Extended such as BI
CMS and
Web Content Enterprise Dashboards
Collaboration
Management Service , Big Data
Platform Platforms portals
100’s of
Open Source Extensive Rich
“Application Rich
with Liferay Open Integration
Portlets” to Security
CE and Standards and Web UI
build Web Features
Liferay EE Support Support
Experience
3

4. Setting Context to Liferay Customization
Intranet Extranet Extended
Content Centric Integration
Collaboration Enterprise Service
Platform Platform
Platforms Platforms
•Ranging from •Employees •Limited Content •Liferay used more
simple web site connect and BUT more as Container
to content centric share information dynamic web •Brings existing
portals. •Typical Intranet applications services, data,
•E.g. news sites, applications •Services exposed content from
reports, •Rich in Social and to vendors, other sources
documents, Collaborative Feel customers, •Renders Web
information •Enterprise Social partners applications by
platforms Networks •Provides “Back calling services to
•Less integration end” Services to other systems
with other other web
enterprise interfaces
systems
Customization defined by “Character” of the Portal Platform
4

5. Setup of required environment, tool kits and techniques or
development approach to help customize Liferay for your Business
Needs
Environment, Tools and
Techniques for Liferay
Customization
5

6. Customization Environment
Liferay Developer
Plugins SDK Liferay IDE
Studio
• Command Line • Uses Plugins SDK • Pre-Bundled
Based • Available as: version of Plugins
Environment • Extension of SDK and Liferay
• Uses Apache Ant Eclipse IDE for IDE
or Maven Liferay • Mainly used for
• Generates a • Bundled with Liferay
Skeleton Project Liferay Enterprise
• Location for Developer Development
Customized Studio
Project • For Development
• Used for Portlets, using CE and EE
Theme versions
Development
6

7. Key Customization Decisions
Information Taxonomy
Hierarchy (or
Categorization
Pre-defined
Architecture not) Tags
Content Assets Structure Templates
Private or Single or
Sites Public Sites Multiple Sites
Personalization Site Templates
Role and Organizational Roles & Identity
Authentication Structure Permissions Integrations
Portlets and Reuse Analysis
New Dynamic External App
Applications Apps Integrations
Theme & Look UI Design
Navigational Usability Page Templates
and Feel Model Patterns & Layout
7

8. Scenario – Content Centric Platform
Example: Content Rich site with different
content types
Collaboration used to share content and
interact around content
Focus: Basic Customization Techniques and
Methodology to adopt
8

9. Creating the right information architecture for your Business
Information Architecture
9

10. Top Level Navigation
10

11. Vocabularies and Tags
11

12. In most cases it’s the content that drives usability and UI
decisions
Content
12

13. Content Publishing
Separate Basic Identify “Structured”
Content Content
• Simple Web Page Identify “Content
Articles Types”
• Documents • FAQs
• Media • HOW TO’s
• Guides
• KB Article
• Glossary
• Updates
13

14. Publish Basic Web Content
14

15. Define Content Structure for
New Content Types
15

16. Define New Content Items
16

17. Define Templates
Templates are scripts that tell Liferay how to
display content in the structure
Use your favorite script method (CSS, FTL,
Velocity Macros, XSL)
Each Structure is actually a XML document that
gets “Transformed” using above methods
resulting in dynamic HTML
17

18. Determine the overall Site Architecture for your solution
Sites and Organizations
18

19. Sites
Sites are “Content and Collaboration Spaces”
visualized for your business.
Each Site will have Its own
• Set of public and private pages
• Page Templates
• Branding
• Members
• Content
19

20. Site Creation
20

21. Organization and Users
Optionally make an Organization
Populates Users to Organization
21

22. Define Roles for your overall solution and create user identity
integrations if required
Roles and Identity Integrations
22

23. Roles
23

24. Identity Integrations
24

25. Workflows to enable content approval cycles
Workflows
25

26. Configure Default Workflows
26

27. Once the overall structure is set, Use populate pages with portlets
and dynamic applications to create your web experience.
Creating Web Experiences
using Themes, and Portlets
27

28. Build Web Experiences
Review Key Portlets that you wish to reuse
Develop CSS and Look and feel for Portlets
Define your own UI views and develop New
Portlets
Integrate other applications into Liferay using
Liferay Services API
28