What are CMS systems?

Liferay DXP is a powerful technology that can help you create various enterprise-grade applications in record time and without straining your resources – we know because we’ve used it quite a lot at Pretius. In this article, I’ll tell you how Liferay works, what are its true costs, and describe the most prevalent business scenarios you can use it in. I’ll also highlight some competing tools and compare them to Liferay.

What are CMS systems?
Before we introduce Liferay, let’s define key terms you’ll need to understand this article: Content Management System (CMS) and Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

I’ll start with CMS. Content Management Systems are tools that have revolutionized the creation and management of websites. Before their dawn – back in the 1990s – website creators had to create sites from scratch. Nowadays, creating, managing and editing websites is much easier.

Administrators can use CMS to manage elements such as text, photos, videos, textures and any other elements posted on a page. They can also assign permissions and responsibilities based on roles – such as authors, administrators, and regular users – to manage workflows easier.

The first CMS system was PRISM, created in 1995. Currently, there are plenty of powerful options, like WordPress, Joomla, and Liferay. Many famous companies and organizations have used these systems. Some examples are NASA, Tesla, The Emmy Awards, Twitter, Stanford University, Harvard University, and eBay. ​

CMS systems – biggest advantages
Ease of use – The main draw of using a CMS is that it allows you to manage websites easily and without specialized knowledge or coding skills.
Price – Many content management systems are open-source and free to use (though you still need to implement and configure them, which may incur costs).
Flexibility – The most prominent CMS offer plenty of plugins and integration options, so you can extend their functionality and connect them to your other systems.
CMS – problems and drawbacks
Website performance – Due to the size of the code that allows you to manage content and other aspects, websites built with a CMS may be slower than a classic static site.
Security risks – The constantly growing number of plug-ins and their updates means that new threats and loopholes that can potentially threaten the website’s security are constantly emerging. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor information about the appearance of such threats and update the pages as patches are released.
Server performance – Some CMS (like Joomla) can overload the available server resources, especially if configured without knowledge of the consequences of installing subsequent extensions.
🔐 Worried about the security of your CMS? Find out how we managed to make WordPress secure for our clients

What distinguishes DXP systems
Another useful term to know is DXP – Digital Experience Platform. It’s an integrated set of core technologies that support the creation, management, delivery and optimization of personalized web applications. DXP can be a single product or a software package with multiple integrated applications. These solutions allow you to support activities related to web analytics, simplify cooperation within the company and with external entities, and thus improve the flow of information at individual levels.

DXP platforms are particularly useful for supporting marketing and sales processes within companies – you can collect and organize customer data to derive real value from it. For example, a retailer can use a DXP to provide a personalized experience that includes shopping, loyalty programs, and relevant content. Customers can interact with the platform in the way that suits them best. The more they engage with it, the more the experience becomes tailored to their preferences.

Another advantage of DXP is that it allows you to “digitize” business operations. This is why so many tools allow for easy integration with other systems and for integrating processes, often out of the box. The workflow management tools, custom content, automated processes, etc., can also serve this purpose.

Digital Experience Platforms unify and evolve the functionalities of Content Management Systems and Website Experience Management Systems. In truth – as Patryk Rutkowski and Bartłomiej Jajkowski highlighted in their DXP vs. CMS comparison: How to manage content and digital assets in 2023? article – the boundary between a CMS and a DXP can be quite blurry, and some technologies bridge that gap and go from one camp to the other as they change and evolve. Liferay is a great example of this.

What is Liferay?
A screen showing Liferay logo.

Liferay is a powerful programming tool written in Java that allows you to build complex web applications easily. Although it’s not the newest tech – the first version of the Liferay Portal CMS was released in 2000 – thanks to constant updates and adapting it to users’ needs, Liferay holds a strong position in the market (not a leading one, though).

Over the years, Liferay has undergone many changes, evolving from Liferay Portal CMS to a full-fledged Liferay DXP system. The platform is a solid choice, especially for large companies that need reliable, stable, secure and adaptable solutions. It found use in various organizations such as the Indian Infosys, the Japanese Fujitsu, the American eBay and the University of California.

Liferay advantages
Liferay has several advantages:

Open-source and free nature – The system has a free variant developed as open-source software, which helps reduce licensing costs.
Flexibility and scalability – Liferay is highly scalable and flexible, thanks to great integration options. You can tailor it to your company’s individual needs.
Intuitiveness – Liferay guarantees an intuitive and uncomplicated development environment. The platform takes advantage of low-code principles and can be used by anyone, even people without technical expertise.
Stability and support – The platform is developed using Open Source methodology by various people worldwide, giving it high stability.
Liferay features
Liferay DXP is very configurable and offers several features a traditional CMS system doesn’t:

Liferay DXP allows you to deliver personalized, contextual and effective customer experiences at the enterprise level. It enables organizations to create and manage content and deliver personalized digital experiences.
You can integrate Liferay with popular systems such as CRM, ERP and PIM. Some examples include Salesforce, Google Drive and Office 365. This allows you to easily transfer data between various systems, which enables communication using various standards, such as SOAP, REST, GraphQL, RSS and your own API.
Liferay DXP also allows you to remove data silos (repositories of useful data that are controlled by one department and isolated from the rest of the company) by capturing data from users via forms and automatically updating information in backend systems such as CRM or ERP.
There is also the option to use Liferay Connected Services (LCS) – a comprehensive collection of tools and services crafted to supervise and manage your Liferay DXP instances. Within LCS, you can streamline activities like installing fix packs, monitoring performance, activating instances, and managing subscriptions.
If you want to learn more about Liferay’s various features and widgets – such as Knowledge Base, Blogs & Webinars, Images, and Documents – check out the video showcase created by my colleague Patryk Rutkowski. You’ll see how easy it is to create a specific type of system – a customer portal – using this technology.