3. Understanding Portal Basics and Theming | Liferay Beginner's Guide

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Liferay Beginner's Guide

By : Xinsheng Robert Chen, Gaurav Barot, Samir Bhatt, Sandeep Nair, Mahipalsinh Rana

3.8 (5)

Liferay Beginner's Guide

3.8 (5)

By: Xinsheng Robert Chen, Gaurav Barot, Samir Bhatt, Sandeep Nair, Mahipalsinh Rana

Overview of this book

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. 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.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action – heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code for this book

Free Chapter

1. Planning Your Portal

1. Planning Your Portal

What is Liferay Portal?

Time for action – browsing sites based on Liferay Portal

Time for action – comparing Yahoo! and YouTube

Time for action – finding the source code of Liferay Portal

Liferay Portal architecture

Main Liferay Portal features

Time for action – watching Liferay Portal portlets in action

Preparation for Liferay Portal installation

Time for action – finding RAM information

Time for action – installing JDK

Time for action – installing MySQL database server

Time for action – installing OpenOffice

Time for action – starting OpenOffice service

Time for action – checking the OpenOffice service

Summary

2. Installing a Liferay Portal Instance

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

Time for action – changing the file

Summary

3. Understanding Portal Basics and Theming

3. Understanding Portal Basics and Theming

Understanding a portal

Navigating Liferay

Time for action – signing in to Liferay Portal

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

Time for action – accessing a portal with a normal user account

Getting an overview of Liferay Portal Architecture

Basics of 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

4. Tips and Tricks-Advanced Configuration

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

5. Building your First Liferay Site

5. Building your First Liferay Site

Designing the site – painting the full picture

Knowing the portal requirements

Organizing users in an organization and a community

Time for action – creating organization for CIGNEX Neighborhood

Time for action – understanding actions associated with the organization

Time for action – creating a community for CIGNEX Neighborhood

Time for action – understanding actions associated with the community

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

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

Summary

6. Managing Pages, Users, and Permissions

6. Managing Pages, Users, and Permissions

Checklist

Creating pages for the Neighborhood site

Time for action – creating pages for Neighborhood communities

Time for action – providing a HTML title and friendly URL for a page

Exploring the User section

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

Time for action – modifying user details

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

Time for action – creating a role to manage pages

Time for action – assigning community/organization Administrator role

Time for action – defining permissions for a bookmark entry

Summary

7. Creating and Publishing Content

7. Creating and Publishing Content

Content management preview

Uploading images

Time for action – uploading an image file

Creating web content

Time for action –adding content to the welcome page

Time for action – creating a structure

Time for action – creating a template

Time for action – creating template-based content

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

Displaying web content

Time for action – adding content to the Welcome page

Time for action – selling houses online

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

Time for action – using the web content list portlet

Time for action – adding the asset publisher portlet

Converting web content to formatted files

Time for action – adding a file conversion feature

Summary

8. Exploring Communities

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

Time for action – searching all content

Time for action – searching for Web Content

Summary

9. Setting up an Online Shop

9. Setting up an Online Shop

Getting started with online store setup

Online shop configuration

Time for action – configuring an online shop page

Time for action – configuring tax rate and currency

Time for action – configuring payment through PayPal

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

Time for action – configuring the shipping cost

Time for action – configuring the insurance cost

Time for action – configuring the e-mail templates

Shopping items

Time for action – item category creation

Time for action – item creation

Shopping cart

Time for action – adding items to the shopping cart

Checkout process

Time for action – making a payment

Order management

Time for action – processing the order

Promotion offers

Time for action – promoting offers

Summary

10. Liferay Server Administration

10. Liferay Server Administration

Getting started with server administration

Monitoring and managing server resources

Time for action – monitoring and controlling Liferay resources

Managing log levels

Time for action – configuring the log levels

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

Time for action – scheduling publication of portal changes

Summary

A. PayPal Test Account Configuration

A. PayPal Test Account Configuration

B. Pop Quiz Answers

Chapter 1, Planning your Portal

Chapter 3, Understanding Portal Basics and Theming

Chapter 5, Building your First Liferay Site

Chapter 6, Managing Pages, Users, and Permissions

Chapter 7, Creating and Publishing Content

Chapter 8, Exploring the Communities

Chapter 9, Setting up an Online Shop

Bonus Chapter, Exploring Social Collaboration

Index

Index

Time for action – accessing a portal with a normal user account

Now you are familiar with the Dockbar. We have also discussed how a Dockbar would be displayed to the admin user. However, what if you are accessing the portal as a normal user? What happens in this case? Would you be able to see all the options as an admin user can? Let's check it out:

Sign out from the portal by clicking on the Sign Out link in the Dockbar.
You will see a Sign In link on the top-right corner of the page. When you click on the link, it will display the Sign In portlet. Click on the Create Account link in this portlet. You will see the form displayed to create your account, as shown in the following screenshot:
Fill the form to create your account and click on the Save button. When you click on the button, it will submit the form and display a message with the temporary password. It will also directly display the Sign In portlet for you to log in. Use the password to log in to the portal.
Observe the Tomcat console...

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