The product's initial setup phase is easy.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on an on-premises model. The product has its own cloud services. After the configuration of the cloud services tool is done in a certain environment, Liferay Digital Experience Platform can be installed on Liferay's cloud platform. Users can also get the tool as a bundle and install it on their preferred cloud, including AWS and Azure, or on an on-premises model.

From a deployment perspective, the tool is a great choice if you consider its quick time-to-market speed.

Installation is easy, but preparing it for production mode is a bit more complex. I've found a lot of people in the market who can install Liferay, but the real problem is not the installation itself. The issue is to install it correctly and tune the product well by doing load tests and fine tuning Liferay and the JVM.

Another very important factor is to follow best practices in your development. My experience says that 90% of the performance issues came from the custom developments, where developers do not follow the recommendations and best practices, or use the product in a bad way.

For this reason, my company wrote a Liferay Best Practices book to share with any internal or external developers. We implemented a certification process to ensure stability, best practices, software quality, architecture, and security guidelines in order to avoid production issues.

Setup is straightforward; Ext is a little complex.

If you compare Liferay Digital to other portal products, it is really quite simple to set up. Like if you compare it with WebSphere Portal if you compare it to SharePoint if you compare it to other enterprise systems you have in the market, in my experience the setup is fine. You need some skills. But the complexity of the setup comes when you want to build out the solution. Let's say if you are a business user, then it is very easy to work with the system. If you are the tech and you are the one who needs to build out the solution and develop, you need to have skills with Java, you need to understand the J2EE stack, you need to understand working with databases, and all the technical stuff like that. It's not very simple on the development side. But for the normal business user that has to manage the system and not do the development, it is quite easy to do and simple to manage the system.  

It usually takes three or four months to deploy this product using three to five technical people on the deployment side. From the client, customer side, usually it would be one or two employees. It depends on the complexity of the solution you need. If the deployment is meant to be a marketing solution, you have to work with the marketing team. If it is going to be something for internal use, you have to work with the appropriate department, like with HR. But the complexity depends on the extent of the deployment, what kind of solution you are going to build. For example, one of the companies we did the deployment for wanted to do B2B, B2C, and B2E. So we had to involve several departments in the deployment. We were working with HR, we had IT, we had the marketing manager, and maybe some other people.  

For maintenance after the development — just to maintain the system — if the company has a system administrator, it is really enough. The total amount of time would just be a few dozen hours a month, usually. That is not talking about the stability of the system or disasters and stuff like that. If it is well-built it is usually very stable. Actually some customers do not have to watch their system at all.  

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The setup process is well documented in the official site. But the development curve is steeper and the documentation could be better.

The initial setup was quite straightforward with the bundled application. Just deploy and restart the server. For cloud, there were some extra settings, but it still was quite straightforward.

For new users, Liferay has very simple steps: Download the bundle and extract it.

If you don’t have Java, install Java and run bundled Tomcat. In a minute or two, you will have your server ready to be used.

Of course, no production level deployment will be using these steps. But Liferay provides a very comprehensive configuration file named "portal-ext.properties". It allows configurations for almost everything, such as database, sharing, sites, and clustering.

If its first time then you will definatly struggle but later on it would be very easy if you understand the structure.

The installation was simple on a Linux-based operating system. It was complex with Windows Servers, but we still managed.

Based on the document specifications, it was time-consuming because of the nature of the deployment. 

Before even looking at Liferay, the system requirements took six months because we use different stakeholders from different government institutions and other stakeholders from the private sector. 

The configuration of Liferay took six weeks.

Another task that took a lot of time was deployment because once it was set up, different people had to start testing the application. This took a lot of time because all of the different stakeholders had to be given time to test it. 

Overall, it took a year, with ten staff to deploy and maintain.

We haven't had any issues with our deployment of Liferay.

Initial setup is as easy as downloading, unpacking and starting. No hassle.

Initial setup is straightforward and I did not find it difficult. Liferay has great online documentation, which gives us more confidence in achieving anything with it.

For us, the initial setup was very complex — It's in Java. In Malaysia, there are not a lot of Java writers or developers.

Setup was straightforward.

The setup is straightforward.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

Compared to other platforms the initial setup is not very complex.

For new installations, the setup is simple; but again migrations for the old version are a nightmare.

Initial setup was very easy. You just unzip the package and you are set to go.

Liferay is very quick and easy to set up, whether you are using the built-in database or an external database.

Initial setup was complex compared to IBM WebSphere.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Liferay bundles make the initial setup is very easy. Just execute a bundled Tomcat package with a Liferay installation within.

The initial setup was quite easy.

The initial setup is straightforward. We found it to be quite easy to install, and very quick.

The setup is pretty simple and it is aligned with practices we see every day in web systems deployment.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

The setup is fairly simple. You can set it up by the time your coffee is brewed.

The initial setup is very easy but the OOTB themes are poor, when comparedto modern web design. If you register on the Marketplace you can download some very moderns themes and use them in your websites.

The setup was complex. Most people didn’t understand how to convert their SharePoint site to the Liferay platform. Many of them still hadn’t been converted when I left the company.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Initial setup is not very complex, but you need to follow the exact steps they suggest and it’s not that easy.

It is easy to set up for any environment. Instructions are available over the internet.

A bit of both. Learning what a new platform can and can’t do can take a while especially if you are moving from an established platform that was bespoke built to a portal based platform. Showcasing the benefits of moving to the members and migrations was tough to start with but has proved to be beneficial.

The platform is independent of the environment and first setup is very easy. Just click.

The initial step is way too easy.

Setup was easy and straightforward.

The setup was easy.

The setup was straightforward. It comes with a bundle and provides a setup wizard for the initial setup.

Setup was not straightforward. The Community Edition was a bit complicated and they should fix the code.