Understanding a portal

By now, you have probably heard that "Liferay is a Portal Server"! Now the question is, "What do we really mean when we use the term Portal Server?"

Well, to get the answer we should first understand what a portal is. A portal is a web-based application or gateway which hosts and runs different applications required by the user. All these applications are integrated to achieve different benefits, such as availability of information at a central location, collaboration, reducing costs, and streamlining your business processes.

To make sure all of the above-mentioned benefits are achieved, Liferay Portal adds one or more applications on a portal page. This application is known as a portlet .

A portlet is a web application which runs in a fragment of a page. These portlets are used by portals as pluggable user-interface components which provide a presentation layer to the Information System. One or more portlets get combined and generate a complete web page or document,...