The Plugins Installation link shows all of the plugins that are currently in- stalled. These are divided into tabs for portlets, themes, layout templates, Hook plugins, and Web plugins. If you want to install a new plugin, click the
Install More Portlets button. You will then be brought to the Plugin Installer,
where you can browse Liferay's repository of portlets or install your own plu- gins. The Plugin Installer will be covered in Chapter 6.
Summary
This chapter has described the resources in Liferay Portal that can be configured to build the foundation of your web site. We have seen how to navigate Liferay's user interface so that you can get anywhere you need to in the portal. We have also looked at overall portal architecture and how you might go about designing your site using Liferay.
Next, we went in-depth through Liferay's Control Panel. Using the Con- trol Panel, we learned how to manage users, organizations, user groups, and roles. We also learned how to configure various server settings, such as au- thentication, LDAP integration, and single sign-on. We also learned how to associate users by default with different user groups, communities, and roles, and we saw how to reserve screen names and e mail addresses so that users cannot register in the portal with them.
Next, we saw how to view and configure overall server settings. We saw how to view the memory currently being used by the server, as well as how to initiate garbage collection, a thread dump, search engine re-indexing, and the clearing of various caches. We learned how to debug parts of the portal by changing log levels, and by viewing the various properties that are defined in the portal.
Finally, we learned how to properly notify users that the portal is about to shut down and how to enable the OpenOffice.org integration. The ability to run multiple portal instances on one installation of Liferay was covered, and we saw how to view the plugins that are currently installed.
All of this information was designed to put you on the path to becoming a seasoned Liferay Portal Administrator.
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ANAGEMENTANAGEMENT
With most products, you would read the previous chapter, understand what the software can do in terms of setting up your environment and secur- ity model, and go ahead and build your system. You'd design your infrastruc- ture and get your server environment up and running while your developers would go ahead and write the applications that would live on your web site. Liferay Portal, however, doesn't leave you to start that far behind. Liferay Portal is more than just a container for applications with a robust security model. It already includes many of the applications you'll need, out of the box, ready to go, and integrated with all the user management and security features you've already learned about.
Perhaps the key application that ships with Liferay is Liferay's Web Con- tent Management system (CMS). We call it the key application because it is the one that most everybody uses, because everyone needs to load content onto their web sites. Liferay's CMS empowers you to manage all of the con- tent on your site quickly, easily, and in the browser. Beyond managing exist- ing content, Liferay CMS lets users easily create and manage everything from a simple article of text and images to full functional web sites. Web publish- ing works alongside Liferay Portal’s larger collection of applications, which means that you can add in shopping cart functionality, visitor polls, web forms, community collaboration tools and more. Everything is done with our collection of easy-to-use tools with familiar rich-text editors and intuitive in- terface.
• Layouts
• Page and content permissions
• Importing and exporting content
• Content creation and editing
• Staging
• Content publishing
• Structures and templates • CMS Workflow
• Asset publisher
By the time we're done, you should be able to apply all of these concepts to your own content. To demonstrate all of Liferay's Content Management features, we'll create and manage content on the portal for a fictitious com- pany called Spartan Software.
First, a little housekeeping. If we're going to be Spartan Software, our portal should also be called Spartan Software. To set the general information about your portal like the name and mail domain, go to Control Panel → Portal
→ Settings. The configuration for Spartan Software might look something like
the below screenshot.
You can also customize the logo in the top left corner of every page by selecting Display Settings under the Miscellaneous tab on the panel to the right. Once you've made the changes, we're ready to begin creating pages.