Web Publishing

As part of its suite of services, Liferay includes a complete web content management system that enables users to quickly build rich web content using many of the same features as extensive content management systems. Content in this sense means a website, web pages, or portions of a web page. Sophisticated features allow users to use predefined templates, schedule when content is published or removed, and determine how others should review content before being published.

Combined with the modular development aspects of a web portal, Liferay allows users to build powerful web pages by combining web content alongside web application portlets, widgets, or gadgets and assigning which pages are accessible or searchable by specific users.

Lufthansa Flight Training School developed an extensive employee portal, including a sophisticated employee store and shopping cart application implemented alongside standard content, using the Liferay web publishing capability.

Document Library & Image Gallery

Liferay includes a full document and image repository that can be leveraged across an enterprise, within a specific group, or for a single individual as a web repository. Enterprise-wide document and image libraries allow groups to store assets, tag them with key words, lock them, search for and leverage them in web pages, or download them for use offline. 

Liferay's portal and community aspects allow individual document libraries to be available to each community or domain defined within the portal. Individuals also benefit from their own document and image library where they can store assets in the cloud.

Asset Publisher

A powerful feature of Liferay Portal is a new portlet called Asset Publisher. This portlet can be added to any web page and configured to display any data contained within the portal based on any combination of criteria, including date published, author, tags, or content type. As new data is added into the portal, the Asset Publisher will find and display the data.

For example, you can setup Asset Publisher to display all content with the tag "sales lead." Whenever content is tagged with "sales lead," whether it is a document, image, blog entry, Wiki page, a message board posting, or a Bookmark to Liferay's home page, that asset would get published in the Asset Publisher. Multiple Asset Publisher portlets can be configured and added to pages.

Workspace Publishing

Enterprise web architectures often include many different web properties, including customer websites, intranets, collaboration platforms, and numerous departmental and group websites. Liferay provides the ability to create workspaces for each within a single platform.

Each space is easily provisioned using the administration UI. It is also given a unique web content repository and document library, in addition to unique collaboration and administration tools. This allows a powerful method to unify the web domains within a single enterprise, allowing common training, common templates, a common user repository, and a common governance and auditing.

• Read more about how AutoZone leveraged Liferay Portal for its employee intranet.

Easy Rich Text Editors

Users can quickly build content within Liferay's Web UI interface without ever having to use external tools. Spell check and text styling are included, enabling anyone to create content without requiring coding knowledge or the need to use other complex tools. Users can also leverage the leading external web design tools.

Web Content Structures and Templates

Liferay Portal allows users to easily create reusable templates for web pages and page sections. This enables users to quickly build pages and allows websites to maintain a common look and feel across the entire site by allowing new pages to be created with an approved set of templates. Users can quickly create templates within Liferay's web UI or by using external web development tools.

Template/Structure Comments

Liferay Portal allows administrators to add instructional comments and notes into templates, which can then be used to provide information on how each template should be used.  This improves productivity between web page designers and content creators and editors.

Integration with Microsoft Office®

Document storage within Liferay is integrated to take advantage of SharePoint® protocols so users can work with Microsoft Office® files located on their local drive and automatically upload them onto the cloud in a Liferay document repository. Since all assets published in Liferay can also require workflow approvals (leveraging Liferay's workflow), users can lock, open, edit, and save a document that is then published into a workflow for approval before being made available to share with others.

For example, a marketing team working on a new product campaign can store Powerpoint files, Word documents, spreadsheets, and graphics in a Liferay document library tagging each with a keyword and assigning a workflow approval process. Users can subscribe to alerts on document changes, be notified of changes needing review, and comment using forums, Wikis, and comment fields.

One-Click Page Creation

Web structures and templates allow common web layouts to be predefined and saved for future web pages. With One-Click Page Creation, users can create a new page and immediately begin adding content to the page layout, allowing web pages to be setup within minutes without any developer support required.

User-Driven Workflow & Approval

A team of individuals often manages the web content of a portal where some are allowed to create and edit content, while others must review and approve the content before it can be published to the live site. Liferay includes a full workflow engine (that can also be easily switched with an external 3^rd party engine), which can be used to coordinate how content is reviewed and published.

In addition, Liferay allows other types of data to require an approval process. Documents, Wiki posts, blogs, etc. can also be required to go through a workflow. Using Liferay's workflow for other types of documents creates a powerful team collaboration platform.

Live Page Editing and Scheduling

Pages from a live site can be edited and previewed without affecting what is seen on the public site, then scheduled for future publishing all within the online editor. Users can use this same method to edit individual pages, entire communities, or full portals. Liferay also allows users to "roll-back" to previous versions of pages, sites, or communities.

Document Conversion and Multi-File Uploads

Liferay provides many features to simplify how users interact on the web. For example, when uploading to the image or document library, instead of adding files one by one, users can select multiple files and upload them with a single click.

Additionally, users can upload and store a document in one file format, but make it available to download in other formats (i.e., a document uploaded as a .doc file can be available for download as a .pdf with Liferay providing the conversion at download time).

Drag-and-Drop Site Maps

Liferay automatically generates a hierarchical site map for the entire portal. These can be used by end users to quickly navigate to specific pages, but can also be used by administrators to manage the list of web pages contained in the portal. Implemented with drag-and-drop, site maps will allow administrators to quickly rearrange pages within the site.

Multi-Tier Search

A portal with web content, documents, images, wikis, blogs, and other user created content becomes a massive repository of data. Search becomes a vital aspect for users of the system since it is essential that users can find the content they need when they want it.   

Liferay's search allows users to search across all assets within the portal to which they currently have access, while also restricting them from assets in which they do not. This multi-tier search capability ensures that users have access to only open content or content available to them based on their roles and membership in various communities.

Out of the box, administrators can choose to use either Amazon OpenSearch or SOLR, though other search engines can also be implemented.

Dynamic Tagging

Search can be used to look inside content published within the portal, but occasionally it is not enough to help users find their desired content. Dynamic Tagging is available in Liferay, allowing content creators to define keywords associated with their content. Users can add keyword tags to web content, documents, message boards, and to more simplifying search and enabling powerful features like the Asset Publisher.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With its ability to easily create web content, blogs, wikis and to share documents, Liferay Portal allows a website to become a valuable repository of information. While Liferay's internal search can be used to find data within the portal, Liferay also optimizes updates to the site map information and makes new pages instantaneously searchable by external search engines.

Easy Integration

Web content viewed within a portal can be manually created or it may come from external sources integrated with Liferay Portal. As a web platform, Liferay provides multiple methods to integrate to external content and data. Liferay can be leveraged in a sophisticated Service Oriented Architecture as well as used for simple integrations via REST or RSS subscriptions.  

World Vision leveraged Liferay Portal's open and flexible framework to integrate dynamic map data with web content.

Dynamic Virtual Hosting and Vanity URL

A single portal can be duplicated over and over again to quickly create hosted websites within one Liferay deployment. Each clone can have its own unique URL, custom theme, and design. For example, a single deployment could host www.companyA.com and www.companyB.com with completely different themes, pages, and applications. 

Additionally, all pages within a portal can be easily given a vanity URL (i.e., you can easily setup new pages and define their URL as www.companyA.com/documents or  www.companyA.com/training).

Multi-Language Support

Liferay currently supports international localization and includes out-of-the-box support for 30+ languages. Users can toggle between different language settings with just one click. Additional languages can be easily added.