Developer(s) Liferay Inc Written in Java | Development status Active Operating system | |
Stable release 7.0.2 (7.0.2 GA3) / August 5, 2016 (2016-08-05) Repository github.com/liferay/liferay-portal/ | ||
Liferay Portal is a free and open source enterprise portal software product. Distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and optional commercial license, Liferay has been declared "Best Open Source Portal" by InfoWorld in 2007. It is primarily used to power corporate intranets and extranets.
Contents
Written in Java, Liferay Portal is a web platform with features commonly required for the development of websites and portals. Liferay includes a built-in web content management system allowing users to build websites and portals as an assembly of themes, pages, portlets/gadgets and a common navigation. Liferay is sometimes described as a content management framework or a web application framework. Liferay's support for plugins extends into multiple programming languages, including support for PHP and Ruby portlets.
Liferay's programming interface is accessible to users with no programming skills for the basic website installation and administration.
Liferay Portal is Java-based and runs on any computing platform capable of running the Java Runtime Environment and an application server. Liferay is available bundled with a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat.
History
Liferay, Inc., is a professional open-source company that provides free documentation and paid professional service to users of its software. Mainly focused on enterprise portal technology, the company has its headquarters in Diamond Bar, California, United States.
Liferay Portal was created in 2000 by chief software architect Brian Chan to provide an enterprise portal solution for non-profit organizations. In 2004, the company was incorporated under the name Liferay, Inc. and formalized its Germany subsidiary Liferay GmbH. In 2007, the company opened new Asian headquarters in Dalian, China, and the Spanish subsidiary Liferay SL. In March 2009, the company opened a new office in Bangalore, India. To date there are 18 offices in 15 countries worldwide with a over 110 partners in 40 countries.
The company's enterprise portal product has been acknowledged by several notable organizations. It was recognized by EContent magazine in its "EContent 100" list of industry leaders and in 2007, InfoWorld named it a "Technology of the Year". In July 2007, it announced a partnership with ICEsoft Technologies, provider of the ICEfaces library, for developing Ajax technology for its enterprise portal software. In January 2008, the company hired the lead engineer for jQuery UI, to exclusively work full-time on the JavaScript library. Gartner recognized Liferay as visionary leader in the Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Most recently in the Gartner 2014 report, Liferay out performed SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Sharepoint to become the leading open source product in its class. Liferay offers different levels of partnership across various geographies for its global SI partners which includes Platinum, Gold and Silver Liferay Service Partners.
Sun Microsystems and Liferay signed a technology-sharing agreement during May 2008. Sun Microsystems rebranded the offering GlassFish Web Space Server. ZDNet further describes the relationship in the May 2008 article Sun and Liferay launch web-presentation platform. In 2010 Sun was acquired by Oracle and the GlassFish Web Space Server was not included in their portal roadmap, with all prospects turned over to Liferay, Inc.
Liferay 6.1 was released in January 2012 and saw several improvements and new functionality including an improved document library, dynamic data lists and an app store.
In April 2013, Liferay partnered with TIBCO Software to offer a series of Liferay enterprise Connectivity Adapters (eC Adapters) that use TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks with the intention of easing integration of Liferay Portal with multiple systems.
Products
Liferay Portal is a JSR-286, JSR-168 and enterprise portal which includes a suite of applications (e.g., content management system, blogs, instant messaging, message boards, etc.)
It is distributed in two different editions:
Liferay also provides a collaboration suite based on the Liferay platform:
Additional Liferay products and projects include:
Core portlets
Liferay comes with certain portlets preinstalled. These comprise the core functionality of the portal system. They include: