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Open Source Portal Software

, April 12, 2006 @ 6:37 pm ET

The open source portal space has been heating up in recent years and we’re seeing many of the content management and blogging platforms offer portal-like services. Here I am talking about portals as if we’re on the same page. It’s difficult to find a definition of ‘portal’ that people are in agreement with, and implementations vary. Open source portal packages such as Liferay Portal, JBoss Portal and Metadot, are placing pressure on the commercial portal leaders – BEA (especially with its acquisition on Plumtree), Vignette, and ATG (although ATG no longer seems to be using the term ‘portal’ to describe any of its products).

This topic came to mind because Liferay, an open source software company, announced the 4.0 release of its Java-based portal product today (see the press release). Enhancements to the 4.0 release include improved security, enterprise taxonomy, support for Velocity templates, private pages, theme enhancements, JSP-170 compliance, and more thorough documentation.

I don’t know much about Liferay Portal, but the users I have spoken with have been big fans. One enterprise end user I met at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in Boston last year said it was his organization’s most valued open source software package. That’s quite an endorsement, considering the variety of packages to choose from.

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Comments (3) Categories: Software

3 Responses to “Open Source Portal Software”

  1. Nick Patience says:
    April 13, 2006 at 10:49 am

    I recall Red Hat launching a portal sever back in 2003 – does anybody use that?

  2. Ken Cooley says:
    June 12, 2006 at 3:12 pm

    Hi Raven,

    Sorry for the spam, but because no one saw my Open Taxonomy PowerPoint at BarCampHouston (I will definitely remember an extension cord next time), I’ve uploaded it onto the BarCampHouston web site. You can get to it from there, or just follow this link:
    http://barcamp.org/f/OpenTaxonomyBarCampHouston.ppt

    It’s probably not directly pertinent to this topic, but I think it does have a lot of potential in Content Management Systems in general, down the road.

    Thanks,

    -Ken Cooley

  3. Metadot Fan says:
    November 23, 2008 at 12:44 am

    You right about how to define a portal. My wife asked me what one was once and I was at a loss to explain it. “Intranet/Extranet/Content Management System, but it’s more than that”, was my reply. Needless to say I left her more befuddled than before she asked…