Liferay Portal Community Plugins

Adding a Plugin to the Community Catalog in 3 steps

Liferay allows allow all of it's community members to register the Themes, Portlets and Layout Templates that they have developed to a community plugin's catalog. It's encouraged but not enforced to use an Open Source license, and you can choose to host the plugin files anywhere so Liferay's catalog will just act as free publicity for your creation.

STEP 1 - Create an account in liferay.com and go to the community catalog.

To create an account (if you don't have one already) use the menu in the upper right corner. Click Sign In, and then go to the Create Account tab. An email will be sent with your password. Use it to log in and accept the 'Terms of use'

Once you are logged in, go to Downloads and then to Community Plugins.

STEP 2 - Click the 'Add Product' button and fill the product details.

All fields are self explanatory, except for the ones related to the respository:

GroupId: Identifies a group of plugins and serves to avoid namespace conflicts with the product id (aka artifactId). It's recommended to use the name of your company or institution (i.e. liferay). Another nice convention is to use a domain that you own (i.e. liferay.com).

ArtifactId: Identifies this plugin. It should not contain any version information. The artifactId should be unique for a given GroupId.

The combination of id will be used by Liferay to track plugins installed and search for newer versions.

Once you're done click the 'Save' button.

STEP 3 - Within the product view click the 'Add Product Version' button and fill the form.

Enter the following details:

Version Name: Should be something such as 4.4.2, 4.2, 12, etc. Follow a common version pattern so that Liferay's Plugin Installer can automatically detect new versions when they are available.

Changelog: Write a descriptive changelog, including installation and migration instructions.

Supported Framework versions: Which Liferay versions are supported.

Download page URL and/or Download URL: It is recommended to add a direct download URL, that will allow you to add the plugin to the repository. Note that Liferay will NOT host your plugin, you'll have to upload it somewhere else and provide the download URL.

Include Artifact to the Repository: If you set this field to 'Yes' your plugin will be available to Liferay's installation through the Plugin Installer. Set it to 'No' if you only want it available through Liferay's website

DONE!

That's it, now your plugin will be available in Liferay's website and also visible and installable from the Plugin Installer if you selected 'Yes' to add it to the repository in the last step.

You can repeat this process to add as many themes, portlets and layout templates as you want.

From now on you can use the 'My Products' tab to edit your product and add new versions of it.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • Include detailed and accurate information.
  • Include screenshots for your plugin.
  • For portlets, try to make them auto-installable without a need to reboot. If that's not possible, please add a warning note in the Changelog for each version of the plugin, telling users to reboot Liferay after installing that plugin.