Liferay Beginner’s Guide

Robert Chen, Sandeep Nair, Samir Bhatt, Mahipalsinh Rana

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Overview

Table of Contents

The Author

Reviews

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Detailed steps for installing Liferay portal and getting it running, for people with no prior experience of building portals
Follow the example of building a neighbourhood site with pre-installed portlets and custom portlets
Create your own communities, organizations and user groups, and learn how to add users to them

Book Details

Language : English
Paperback : 396 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]
Release Date : December 2011
ISBN : 1849517002
ISBN 13 : 978-1-84951-700-3
Author(s) : Robert Chen, Sandeep Nair, Samir Bhatt, Mahipalsinh Rana, Gaurav Barot
Topics and Technologies : All Books, Beginner's Guides, Open Source, Web Development

Preface
Chapter 1: Planning Your Portal
Chapter 2: Installing a Liferay Portal Instance
Chapter 3: Understanding Portal Basics and Theming
Chapter 4: Tips and Tricks-Advanced Configuration
Chapter 5: Building your First Liferay Site
Chapter 6: Managing Pages, Users, and Permissions
Chapter 7: Creating and Publishing Content
Chapter 8: Exploring Communities
Chapter 9: Setting up an Online Shop
Chapter 10: Liferay Server Administration
Appendix A: PayPal Test Account Configuration
Appendix B: Pop Quiz Answers
Index

Preface

Chapter 1: Planning Your Portal

What is Liferay Portal?
Time for action – browsing sites based on Liferay Portal

Definition of a portal
Horizontal vs. vertical portals

Time for action – comparing Yahoo! and YouTube

Open source vs. commercial portals

Time for action – finding the source code of Liferay Portal
Liferay Portal architecture

Web service provider
Liferay is flexible
Liferay is standard compliant

Main Liferay Portal features

Theme and layout
Communities and organizations
Content Management System and Web Content Management

Time for action – watching Liferay Portal portlets in action
Preparation for Liferay Portal installation

Hardware requirements

Time for action – finding RAM information

Software requirements

Operating systems
Java Development Kit

Time for action – installing JDK

Application servers and servlet containers
Database servers

Time for action – installing MySQL database server

Web browser
Installing OpenOffice

Time for action – installing OpenOffice
Time for action – starting OpenOffice service
Time for action – checking the OpenOffice service

Archive tools

Summary

Chapter 2: Installing a Liferay Portal Instance

Getting started
Liferay with Apache Tomcat
Time for action – deploying on Tomcat
Liferay with JBoss Application Server
Time for action – deploying on JBoss AS
Liferay with GlassFish
Time for action – deploying in GlassFish
Liferay with Oracle WebLogic
Time for action – configuring Weblogic
Configuring Oracle WebLogic
Deploying Liferay on WebLogic
Liferay on existing Tomcat
Time for action – deploying Liferay
Database configuration
Time for action – creating the database

Configuring Liferay to use MySQL

Time for action – changing the file
Summary

Chapter 3: Understanding Portal Basics and Theming

Understanding a portal
Navigating Liferay
Time for action – signing in to Liferay Portal

Getting familiar with the Dockbar
The Add option

Time for action – creating a new page and adding a portlet

Using the Manage option

Time for action – accessing a portal with a normal user account
Getting an overview of Liferay Portal Architecture

Understanding the Liferay building blocks

User
User group
Role
Community
Organization
Teams

Basics of the Control Panel

Visiting the Control Panel

Time for action – creating a new user
Changing Portal's look and feel with themes
Time for action – installing a new theme and applying it to the portal
Summary

Chapter 4: Tips and Tricks-Advanced Configuration

Renaming our portal
Time for action – changing our portal name
SSO with OpenID
Time for action – using OpenID for authentication
Ask users to accept terms before accessing Liferay
Time for action – enabling Terms of Use
Time for action – changing Terms of Use
E-mail notifications
Time for action – enable notification for account creation
Adding custom attributes for User
Time for action – giving the option to add a user's favorite sport
OpenOffice integration
Time for action – enabling OpenOffice integration
Changing the hostname
Time for action – changing our portal name
Mail server
Time for action – enabling the mail server
Summary

Chapter 5: Building your First Liferay Site

Designing the site – painting the full picture

Users
Content
Applications
Security

Knowing the portal requirements

CIGNEX Neighborhood portal

Organizing users in an organization and a community

Organization—structured grouping of users

Adding the organization

Time for action – creating organization for CIGNEX Neighborhood
Time for action – understanding actions associated with the organization

Understanding the difference between a Location and Regular Organization
Community—a collection of users having common interests
Adding the community

Time for action – creating a community for CIGNEX Neighborhood
Time for action – understanding actions associated with the community

What suits your portal—organization or community?

Using organizations
Using communities

User groups—arbitrary collection of users
Time for action – adding a user group to CIGNEX Neighborhood
Time for action – understanding the actions associated with the group

User group and page templates

Time for action – creating a page template for the Bowlers user group
Summary

Chapter 6: Managing Pages, Users, and Permissions

Checklist
Creating pages for the Neighborhood site

Creating pages for Neighborhood communities

Time for action – creating pages for Neighborhood communities

Setting page-level attributes to define page characteristics

Time for action – providing a HTML title and friendly URL for a page
Exploring the User section

Configuration for user pages' default porltets
Creating an administrator user to manage the Neighborhood site

Time for action – creating a user and assigning an administrator role

Editing the user profile

Time for action – modifying user details

Assigning users to Neighborhood communities and organizations

Time for action – assigning a user to communities and organizations
Disabling the option to register for the site for guest users
Time for action – disabling the Register option for a guest user
Exploring role/permission management in Liferay

Creating a role to manage pages of the Neighborhood site

Time for action – creating a role to manage pages

Portal scoped roles
Community/Organization roles
Assigning users to community/organization administrator role

Time for action – assigning community/organization
Administrator role

More on permissions
Defining resource-level permissions

Time for action – defining permissions for a bookmark entry
Summary

Chapter 7: Creating and Publishing Content

Content management preview

Analyzing online content
Organizing content
Purpose of Liferay content management

Uploading images
Time for action – uploading an image file
Creating web content

Regular web content

Time for action –adding content to the welcome page

Web content with a structure and template

Time for action – creating a structure
Time for action – creating a template
Time for action – creating template-based content

Migrated web content

Time for action –migrating static content from an existing site using the web content portlet
Displaying web content

Welcome page

Time for action – adding content to the Welcome page

Houses-on-Sale page

Time for action – selling houses online

Registration page

Time for action – populating the registration page
Uploading documents
Time for action – uploading a video file
Time for action – uploading a PDF file
Showing a PDF file link in web content
Time for action – embedding a link for a PDF file
Enabling comments for web content
Time for action – enabling comments for content
Disclosing decrypted Congress documents
Time for action – displaying documents
Managing content

Reviewing web content

Time for action – using the web content list portlet

Monitoring other content

Time for action – adding the asset publisher portlet
Converting web content to formatted files
Time for action – adding a file conversion feature
Summary

Chapter 8: Exploring Communities

Prerequisite
Setting up an online game using Flash Portlet
Time for action – setting up an online game using Flash Portlet
Adding Web Content Display to announce a cricket match
Time for action – announcing a cricket match
Using Video Portlet to share Neighborhood videos
Time for action – sharing Neighborhood videos
Sharing Neighborhood photos using Image Gallery
Time for action – sharing Neighborhood photos
Exploring chat functionality to enable chat between Neighborhood members
Time for action – exploring chat functionality
Integrating Open Social Gadgets in Neighborhood site
Time for action – integrating Open Social Gadgets
Creating bookmark of useful links using Bookmark Portlet
Time for action – creating bookmarks of useful links
Conducting polls in the Neighborhood site using Polls Portlet
Time for action – creating bookmarks of useful links
Changing language of Neighborhood site using Language Portlet
Time for action – changing language using Language Portlet
Displaying breaking news as a carousel on the Neighborhood site
Time for action – displaying breaking news as a carousel
Defining a search on the Neighborhood site

Setting site wide search on the Neighborhood site

Time for action – searching all content

Setting Web Content search on the Neighborhood site

Time for action – searching for Web Content
Summary

Chapter 9: Setting up an Online Shop

Getting started with online store setup
Online shop configuration

Page configuration

Time for action – configuring an online shop page

Payment configuration

Time for action – configuring tax rate and currency

Payment method configuration

Time for action – configuring payment through PayPal

Adding PayPal Sandbox environment support in the Shopping portlet

Time for action – installing a plugin to provide PayPal Sandbox environment support

What about payment with credit cards?

Shipping cost configuration

Time for action – configuring the shipping cost

Percentage formula for shipping cost calculation

Insurance cost configuration

Time for action – configuring the insurance cost

E-mail configuration

Time for action – configuring the e-mail templates
Shopping items

Item categories

Time for action – item category creation

Changing the Parent Category

Shopping items

Time for action – item creation

Basic attributes
Fields section attributes
Prices section attributes
Images section attributes

Shopping cart

Let's do shopping

Time for action – adding items to the shopping cart

Item listing view (category listing view)
Item details view

Checkout process
Time for action – making a payment

Address details
Order confirmation

Order management
Time for action – processing the order

Order listing
Order details

Promotion offers
Time for action – promoting offers

Coupon listing
Edit coupon details

Summary

Chapter 10: Liferay Server Administration

Getting started with server administration
Monitoring and managing server resources
Time for action – monitoring and controlling Liferay resources

Memory utilization

Used Memory versus Total Memory
Used Memory versus Maximum Memory

Memory management operations
General maintenance operations

Managing log levels
Time for action – configuring the log levels

What if the class or package entry is not found?
Configuring the log levels permanently

Time for action – changing log levels permanently
Managing file upload size and types
Time for action – configuring document library file settings
Monitoring portal sessions
Time for action – monitoring live user sessions
Configuring multiple portals on the same Liferay server
Time for action – configuring another portal instance
Virtual hosting of communities and organizations
Time for action – virtual host configuration
Implementing the staging environment
Time for action – configuring staging environments

Staging configuration
Publish to Live Now
Scheduled publication

Time for action – scheduling publication of portal changes
Summary

Appendix A: PayPal Test Account Configuration

Appendix B: Pop Quiz Answers

Index

Robert Chen

He started implementing Spring MVC portlets in Liferay 4.3.1 in Februray 2008. He has four years experience with Liferay portal technology. He has worked on 14 projects that use the Liferay portal framework. His positions have been Liferay developer, senior consultant and project architect. He is familiar with technologies used in Liferay including Hibernate, Spring, Ehcache, Struts, JSF, ICEfaces and Vaadin API. He has implemented web service and configured websites using the latest version of Liferay portal.

Sandeep Nair

He has been working in Liferay for more than two years. He has executed projects using Liferay in various domains like Construction, Financial and Medical fields providing solutions like Collaboration, Enterprise Content Management, and Web Content Management systems. He has created a free and open source Google Chartlet plugin for Liferay which has been downloaded and used by people across 90 countries as per sourceforge statistics.

Samir Bhatt

He has been working in Liferay for more than two years. He is currently leading Liferay practice at his organization. He worked as Liferay architect in more than seven projects. He is a certified Liferay trainer. He has been delivering public and private Liferay training all over the world. Overall he has around 11 years of experience in information technology industry.

Mahipalsinh Rana

His stint with portal server technologies started in 2006 when he started working with Sun Portal Server 7.2. Later Sun became technology partner of Liferay for development in 5.2.x and he was part of that team. He has looked after Internationalization (I18n) across various modules. For the last two years he has acted as Liferay Technical Architect and led around 10 projects. He has also enjoyed doing Liferay training from time to time being a certified trainer from Liferay. He likes exploring other technologies like Spring , REST API and Internationalization (I18n).

Gaurav Barot

He has been working on Liferay for nearly three years. He has executed Liferay projects in various domains like media, healthcare, insurance etc. He has been involved in the complete lifecycle of the project starting from requirement gathering to deployment. He has worked on various versions of Liferay from 5.x to 6.0 SP1. He is a certified trainer as well and has provided more than 10 successful private and public training sessions to 70+ trainees. He has six+ years of industrial experience. He is leading the Liferay Certification Program at his organization.

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Sample chapters

You can view our sample chapters and prefaces of this title on PacktLib or download sample chapters in PDF format.

Find your book in our support section to find errata and to download code samples.

What you will learn from this book

Set up and run Liferay portal in an application server of your choice and configure with MySQL Database
Apply a theme to portal pages and change their layouts
Create communities, organizations and User groups
Add users, create portal pages and apply permissions
Create web content and publish content on portal pages
Build community pages using out of box and custom portlets
Set up social collaboration applications in the portal
Configure and run an online store

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In Detail

Liferay portal is a leading horizontal portal product, written in Java. It has the power to provide the intranets and extranets of large corporations. Liferay will allow you to build your company’s portal quickly, efficiently, and in a custom way to suit the needs of your corporation.

Liferay Beginner’s Guide will show you how to set up your own site from scratch. Most books assume that you have knowledge of portals before working with Liferay and so include more theory than practice. However, only enthusiasm is required for reading this book as the step-by-step instructions, which follow the creation of a sample community site, will make it easy to install and configure Liferay, set up a Liferay portal instance, and use the out-of-the-box portlets of Liferay.

By following the logical flow of the chapters and the creation of the sample site, you will set up your Liferay site in several quick and easy stages. You will start by installing Liferay in your application server or servlet container of choice. You will learn how to customize the look and feel of the portal, change the URL of the site and create your own communities and organizations within the portal, then add users to them. By the end of the book, you will have a fully operational Liferay portal and the confidence to maintain and customize it to meet your needs.

Approach

Part of Packt’s Beginner’s Guide series, each chapter follows the creation of a fictional neighbourhood site to demonstrate an aspect of Liferay portal with practical examples, screenshots, and step-by-step instructions.

Who this book is for

All you need in order to benefit from the Liferay Beginner’s Guide is programming experience. No prior knowledge of Liferay is required, although experienced Liferay portal programmers who need to get up to speed with its latest features will also find this book useful.