I still love Liferay, but this may save some people a bit of heart break!  I went through almost exactly the same journey in choosing Liferay for a new large scale website.

At first it seems to offer everything you ever wanted in a portal system, even more so (including making the coffee), but once you start to look beneath the hood, things become a little murkier.  It was after a shambolic training course that I fell out of love with Liferay, but after looking through a few alternatives, it became the best contender again.

It’s all about managing expectations…

Your Software Made Me Cry: How to Select an Open-Source Java Portal for your Enterprise.

Liferay is a fantastic Java based portal system.  I’m currently involved in a project to deliver a website integrating a CMS system and the Liferay portal.  Through development of JSR 168 based portlets written using the Spring Portlet MVC framework, Liferay can enable a huge amount of flexibility to the business to create, update and maintain a hugely complex site with little effort.

As an open source product, it is a shining star of what can be achieved with a focused team.  Liferay has become an enterprise level product powering the web sites and intranets of several large brand name companies.

All in all, congratulations are in order for a VERY good job done!

PRESS RELEASE: Liferay Portal 5.2 Released