6 Replies Latest reply on Nov 25, 2006 7:55 AM by peter.coppens

    Personalized portal general question

    peter.coppens

      Gentlepeople,

      I have the following requirements to implement and for which I think a combined portal/cms system like jboss portal would be very useful

      The system has three groups of users and three types of content

      The users are

      - Administrators - create user groups, users and user (or user group) specific portal pages
      - Content providers - create the content and decide which of the users or user groups can see the created information
      - Normal users - login in and "consume" the information

      The content types are
      - Global content, available to all users
      - Group content available to a given user group
      - Private content, avaiable to a specific user

      I would like to implement this using a portal/cms system. I did an initial attempt using Liferay, and while I have it working I did run into a lot of problems (technical problems , missing features and lack of documentation and especially lack of any feedback on the mailing list).

      So - simple generic questions really

      1/ Has anyone done something similar and how difficult/easy was it using jboss portal

      and/or

      2/ Anyone any high level guidelines as to how I could translate my requirements to jboss portal concepts.

      I understand these are very high level questions but before I dive into learning the details of jboss portal it would be nice to have some feed-back.

      *Anytype* of feedback would be warmly welcomed

      Peter Coppens

        • 1. Re: Personalized portal general question

           

          "Peter.Coppens" wrote:
          I would like to implement this using a portal/cms system. I did an initial attempt using Liferay, and while I have it working I did run into a lot of problems (technical problems , missing features and lack of documentation and especially lack of any feedback on the mailing list).


          Would it be impolite to laugh? ;-)

          "Peter.Coppens" wrote:

          1/ Has anyone done something similar and how difficult/easy was it using jboss portal

          and/or

          2/ Anyone any high level guidelines as to how I could translate my requirements to jboss portal concepts.


          Fine-grained security over CMS nodes (folders/files) will be included in 2.6. Thats probably the one thing we're missing, that you need, in 2.4. With 2.6, you will be able to assign security restrictions on folder/file for any Role or even User.

          Note, the CMS in 2.6 will also contain jBPM workflow integration.

          So I would have to say at this point in time, we don't have this feature. We have an Alpha of 2.6 scheduled for December, that should have alphaversions of this included within.

          • 2. Re: Personalized portal general question
            peter.coppens

            Wow....a reply in less than 15 minutes! That for a start is a big difference compared with my previous experiences in the open source portal world (event the Liferay sales mailing address which I eventually tried...after becoming really very desparate did no reply the first time I tried)

            ...and it's ok to laugh, although I have to admit I am still laughing a little green after 2 weeks of liferay frustration.

            Anyway...so first of all thanks for the answer.

            Now, assume I want to throw in some development efforts of my own and that security by "obscurity" is sufficient (to start with).

            Would that be feasible in a reasonable amount of time - reasonable meaning 2 weeks for someone with Java expertise but no portal/jboss knowledge?

            Thanks,

            Peter

            • 3. Re: Personalized portal general question

               

              "Peter.Coppens" wrote:
              Now, assume I want to throw in some development efforts of my own and that security by "obscurity" is sufficient (to start with).

              Would that be feasible in a reasonable amount of time - reasonable meaning 2 weeks for someone with Java expertise but no portal/jboss knowledge?


              Maybe... aside from Java, a good understanding of the portlet spec will likely help here. Also, since we are dealing with a JCR CMS, a basic understanding of JCR will help too. Our code isn't rocket science, so any adept programmer can likely follow the logic quite easily.

              I am currently (today) stubbing out the security functionality in the CMSAdminPortlet/jsps and will check them in to SVN by the end of day. After that, you are welcome to look at the skeleton pages and suggest changes.

              It may be a week or two before the team circles back to finish it up, so if you think you can get something done in the meantime, it would certainly help.

              The issue for me, is where to set the role informatioon... not sure we've decided yet on setting it in the cms as a node property or some other place.



              • 4. Re: Personalized portal general question
                peter.coppens

                THanks Roy,

                Do you have any news on

                I am currently (today) stubbing out the security functionality in the CMSAdminPortlet/jsps and will check them in to SVN by the end of day. After that, you are welcome to look at the skeleton pages and suggest changes.



                Is it worthwhile for me to try and build the tip of the code?

                Also wrt
                Fine-grained security over CMS nodes (folders/files) will be included in 2.6


                I could not really find any information on security of the cms feature currently on jboss portal. Would you happen to have a pointer to information of what is currently available?

                Thanks!

                Peter


                • 5. Re: Personalized portal general question
                  peter.coppens

                  Hello,

                  In the context of my attempts to create a personalized login page for each user with content extracted from the cms, I was thinking along the lines of a temporary (and unsecure) hack where I populate the portlets on the users' page with cms information that is retrieved based on the users' login name.

                  I would e.g. have a separate cms folder for each user and get the contents from within that cms folder.

                  One approach could be to make a new version of the CMSPortlet (I am asuming that should not be to difficult). On the other hand I am tempted to try and achieve this in jsp using something along the lines of the JSPPortlet example.

                  So, I am looking for some help/advice on the following items

                  1/ Is one of the above approaches valid and which one is the better one
                  2/ Are there any other alternatives?
                  3/ Is there a CMS taglib available I could use if I go the JSP way?

                  All help, advice or pointer to helpful information is warmly welcomed

                  Thanks,

                  Peter

                  • 6. Re: Personalized portal general question
                    peter.coppens

                    So...I have made a version of the CMSPortlet which takes into account the user name and then goes into the cms looking in folders where the user's name is part of the folder location(path).

                    Works good enough but obviously there is no security. Anyone can read anyone's content if he/she knows the URL, which is not what I want in the long run.

                    Could someone come back with the status on the more fine tuned cms security - I would be happy to test and/or share ideas (e.g. Liferay seems to have this a bit better under control with the latest release).

                    Thanks,

                    Peter