What exactly is the point of a portal if there are application servers.

[O. Ziggy]

Hi all,

i am new to all JBOSS portal. I've been looking for a java/j2ee based web portal and came across jboss porta and a few others namely liferay, exo etc.

What i am looking for is a web portal that i can use for an ordinary community website. This will include things like an article manager, a message board, a calendar, blogs and an image library.

The site that i currently have is based on ASP but i would like to migrate this to a java based one so i started looking for a java based web portal.

I do have some experience with Jakarta Tomcat and a servlet based java application that runs in the Tomcat container. When i started looking for the web portal i was expecting it to be a java application that would run within an application server e.g. Tomcat, Jboss etc.

Reading about JBoss portal i am bit confused as to what exactly is the difference between the JBoss portal and a normal servlet container(App server). I would appreciate if someone can clarify these questions for me.

1. What is the difference between Jboss portal and other servlet containers.
2. Most of the literature i have seen about Jboss portal describes application deployed in the portal as portlets. Are these mini components that can be deployed to make up one application? For example am i right in thinking that i should be able to deploy a portlet for a message board and one for an image gallery? Can these be integrated to form one web application?
3. When i have installed installed jboss portal, do i then have to find a portlet that will be the web portal or is the Jboss portal the actual web portal? I wasnt sure about this because the example in the quick start guide shown a portlet running within JBP.
4. Are there example sites out there that use the Jboss portal
5. Are portlets freely availbable?
6. Is Jboss portal overkill for a middle sized website

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

What is the point of Struts and JSF if there are Servlets and JSPs?

The portal isn't anything wildly new, it's just a nice framework for content aggregation and user personalization/customization.

-Cameron McKenzie

[Denise Advincula]

Originally posted by O. Ziggy:
What i am looking for is a web portal that i can use for an ordinary community website. This will include things like an article manager, a message board, a calendar, blogs and an image library.

The site that i currently have is based on ASP but i would like to migrate this to a java based one so i started looking for a java based web portal.

Hello!

I haven't tried JBOSS Portal yet. But maybe you could try this open source J2EE based CMS for your website:

http://www.magnolia.info/

I hope this helps.