Designing the site – painting the full picture

Whenever we get the requirements of the portal, we should first ask ourselves, how would the portal look when it goes live? This one small question will open a door to a lot of other questions and a lot of information which will be required to implement the portal.

You should always think of the end state of the portal and then start painting the complete picture of the portal. This approach is known as beginning with the end!

Now, as we have just discussed the approach we should take while starting the site design, let's understand the information we can retrieve or get when we ask ourselves this question. We will discuss four main components of the Liferay Portal design.

Users

No matter what the size of the portal is—small, medium, or large—it will always be designed for the users. Users are at the centre of any portal application.

Let's think of a very common portal, http://www.cnn.com. Just imagine that you have to implement this portal. You...