This guide is intended to be used to catalog what the Liferay
community considers to be the most important resources you should
be aware of as a new end user and new member of the Liferay community.
This document is not a manual itself, but instead is intended to
point you to what the community considers to be the "most up to date"
resource covering a particular topic.
If you plan on doing development using Liferay (creating custom portlets, customizint the existing Liferay system, etc.), you may also be more interested in Roadmap for new developers.
Obtaining a distribution of Liferay
Last updated: 11-03-2007
Covers version: 4.3.3
There are several ways to obtain a working copy of Liferay. The easiest, and most direct way, is to download a complete bundle, which can be found here: http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/downloads/
For more information check Installation Options in the Liferay Installation Guide
Note: This links are for version 4.3. Check the documentation page for similar information for other versions
Installing and configuring Liferay
Last updated: 11-03-2007
Covers version: 4.3.3
The best way to get started installing and configuring Liferay is to read the following guides:
Also, you may find useful the following wiki articles for specific platforms:
Important Liferay concepts
Last updated: 11-04-2007
Covers version: 4.3.3
New users to the system will need to learn and understand the following concepts to get the most use out of the Liferay system
- Community: A community or virtual community is a key concept of Liferay. By default Liferay provides a community called 'Guest' plus a personal community for the administrator. The 'Communities' portlet can be used to create as many communities as desired. Each community is formed by:
- A set of users: which are called members and which can be given different permissions within the community by assigning them 'Community Roles'
- A set of public and private pages: the private pages will only be seen by members while the public pages are visible to anyone. It's optional for each community to have either public pages, private pages, both or none.
- A set of permissions: that all of its members will inherit.
- Layout: Is the technical name given to a page within a community. The most common type of layout is 'portlets' which allows a flexible composition of the contents of the page by placing boxes (portlets) in predefined areas or columns. For more information, see Layout
- Layout template: Determines the active areas (or columns) where portlets can be placed in layouts of type 'portlets'. For more information, see Layout Template
- Organization: Every user can belong to one organization (in the development version and thus in v4.4+ can also belong to several organizations). By belonging to that organization the user inherits all the permissions assigned to it. An organization can also have a set of public and private pages just like a community.
Other resources for end users
Last updated: 11-04-2007
Covers version: 4.3.3
Liferay.com hosts a good number of training videos (35 right now) that show the most important functionalities of the portal. Be sure to check those at:
