Liferay is a prominent Content Management System that is adopted by enterprises across the world to build portals and corporate sites.

Search is a very important and widely used feature of Liferay development. Elasticsearch goes well with Liferay. Liferay architectures either use embedded Elasticsearch or use the Remote Elasticsearch. The experts of the Liferay development services recommend using the Remote Elasticsearch option as it enhances the search performance of the system. Embedded is not recommended for production environments as it might slow down the performance.

In this blog, we have provided the steps to be performed to integrate remote Elasticsearch with Liferay DXP 7.2.

Check the Liferay compatibility matrix for the Elastic search version.

https://www.liferay.com/documents/10182/246659966/Liferay+DXP+7.2+Compatibility+Matrix.pdf/ed234765-db47-c4ad-7c82-2acb4c73b0f9

2) For instance we are using ElasticSearch Version 7.6.2 which can be downloaded from the link below.

https://www.elastic.co/downloads/past-releases/elasticsearch-7-6-2

3) Elasticsearch services basically require the permission of a user named elasticsearch user only you can create elasticsearch user with the below command.

sudo useradd -m elasticsearch

4) Upgrade Liferay elastic search from 6. x to 7. x by downloading Liferay Connector ElasticSearch 7 lpkg plugin from the Liferay marketplace.

5) To install pkg, copy the pkg file to Liferay’s deploy folder and let the file get started.

6) Once the pkg is started shut down the server.

7) Blacklist the 6.x elastic search by creating com.liferay.portal.bundle.blacklist.internal.BundleBlacklistConfiguration.config file in server osgi config.

8) In com.liferay.portal.bundle.blacklist.internal.BundleBlacklistConfiguration.config file put the following content.

blacklistBundleSymbolicNames=[ \
“com.liferay.portal.search.elasticsearch6.api”, \
“com.liferay.portal.search.elasticsearch6.impl”, \
“com.liferay.portal.search.elasticsearch6.spi”, \
“com.liferay.portal.search.elasticsearch6.xpack.security.impl”, \
“Liferay Connector to X-Pack Security [Elastic Stack 6.x] – Impl” \
]

9) Now clear servers temp, work, osgi/state folders and restart the server (A best practise step,not documented anywhere).

10) Start the server and reindex all searches.

11) create a directory named elasticsearch in /var/lib/ & /var/log/ folder and assign elasticsearch user permission to those directories.

12) Go to /home/elasticsearch/elasticsearch7.6.2/config/elasticsearch.yml file and enter following details.
node.name-anyname,host-127.0.0.1,port-9200

13) Go to /home/elasticsearch/elasticsearch7.6.2/bin and install following plugins using command sudo ./elasticsearch-plugin install <<pluginname>>.

analysis-icu,analysis-kuromoji,analysis-smartcn,analysis-stempel

14) Kill all java processes, if running.

15) Start elasticsearch by going to /home/elasticsearch/elasticsearch7.6.2/bin and using command ./elasticsearch -d

16) Go to Liferay server osgi/config folder create a file named com.liferay.portal.search.elasticsearch7.configuration.ElasticsearchConfiguration.config
Enter the following details in this file.

additionalConfigurations=””
additionalIndexConfigurations=””
additionalTypeMappings=””
bootstrapMlockAll=”false”
clientTransportIgnoreClusterName=”false”
clientTransportNodesSamplerInterval=””
clientTransportPingTimeout=””
clientTransportSniff=”true”
clusterName=”LiferayElasticsearchCluster”
discoveryZenPingUnicastHostsPort=”9300-9400″
httpCORSAllowOrigin=”/https?://localhost(:[0-9]+)?/”
httpCORSConfigurations=””
httpCORSEnabled=”true”
httpEnabled=”true”
indexNamePrefix=”liferay-”
indexNumberOfReplicas=””
indexNumberOfShards=””
logExceptionsOnly=”true”
networkBindHost=””
networkHost=””
networkPublishHost=””
operationMode=”REMOTE”
overrideTypeMappings=””
retryOnConflict=”5″
transportAddresses = [ \
“localhost:9300″, \
]
transportTcpPort=””

17) Restart the server and go to search and do reindex all, reindex spell.

That will ensure that the Liferay DXP is running with remote Elasticsearch.

ContCentric is a prominent Liferay development company. We provide customized, robust, and cost-effective content management solutions using the Liferay DXP version to our enterprise clients. Apart from Liferay DXP portal development services and upgrades, we also offer consultancy, support, and maintenance services.

If you want to get a customized portal solution to streamline the content management at your business, then you can drop us a line at marketing@contcentric.com. Our expert Liferay consultants will be glad to respond to you for solving the content maze of your organization.

Related bog: Liferay DXP or CMS- What is Preferable for Your Business?

Liferay development has gained fame as an integrated digital experience platform across the corporate world. Its Digital Experience Platform (DXP) has enabled MNCs, large companies, and even SMEs to offer personalized experiences to the customers throughout their journey. Liferay DXP has many user-friendly and enterprise-focused features and excellent functionality. One of its useful features is Staging.

The concept of staging is important for enterprise content management services. It enables Liferay developers to modify the business website behind the scenes and publish all the updates at once. Visitors or customers cannot see developers changing the web site before their eyes thanks to the Staging feature. Liferay facilitates developers to make changes to the website in the specific staging area.

Here we give a step-by-step guide for staging in Liferay DXP 7.2 from the perspective of a Liferay development company. Let’s understand the importance of the staging concept through a real-time use case.

In the CMS portal, we may need a setup where data on the production site should first be viewed on some local environment before uploading it upon the production server for the end-users. Such functionality in Liferay can be achieved using a staging concept.

Related blog: What are New Features in Liferay DXP 7.1 Version?

Let’s discuss every step of the staging setup now.

1) To do a staging setup between two Liferay servers, first, check the connectivity between two servers.

For example, to check connectivity between servers with port numbers 8080 and 9090 from your system’s terminal enter command curl https://127.0.0.1:9090 and this should return some Liferay HTML string content in your terminal as shown in the below image-

2) In both servers portal-ext.properties keep the portals available, enable language as same. For example, if the portal supports only English and Spanish, then portal-ext.properties property should have the following property in both the servers. Also, Liferay’s use of a pre-shared key between staging and production environments helps secure the remote publication process. It also removes the need to send the publishing user’s password to the remote server for web service authentication.

Using a pre-shared key allows Liferay to create an authorization context (permission checker) from the provided email address, screen name, or user ID without the user’s password. Enter the same secret key in both the servers as shown in the below image.

Note:
If you don’t use hexadecimal encoding, i.e. if you use the default setting tunneling.servlet.shared.secret.hex=false, the value of the tunneling.servlet.shared.secret property must be ASCII-compliant.

3) In both servers fix pack version, Liferay version should be the same and to check the fix pack version, Liferay version of both the servers by going to respective server patching-tool folder and entering command ./patching-tool.sh info

4) In both staging, publication servers there should be sync between jars, wars of both the servers so deploy all the jars, wars in both the servers.

5) Log in to the first server with the administrator role from which staging is to be done and go to particular site Publishing->Staging as shown in the below image-

Also Read- Why Businesses should Develop Portals with Liferay?

6) Select Remote Live and enter the details of the second server on which cloning is to be done as shown in below images

Note: If you want to enable page versioning in staging server select the Enabled on public/private pages options and the respective assets for which you want to enable staging between two servers.

7) On a successful staging connection, you’ll get the screen shown below with a success message.

8) To publish the whole content select on the ‘+’ icon in the above screen and select relevant assets that you want to export to the publication server and select publish to live option.

Note: if you want to publish content on scheduled time, select the schedule option along with the respective time details. This is an amazing option that allows you to publish changes at a specific time.

9) On successful publication, you’ll get a screen as shown in the below image.

10) Now, for example, in order to publish any single web content asset select publish to live option for particular web content asset as shown in the below image.

11) In order to publish any new page, go to that page and select publish to live option then go to ‘Switch to Advanced Publication’ and publish the particular new page that you want to publish.

That’s it! The staging concept in the Liferay DXP 7.2 and other versions can be a game-changer in the page publication. However, it is advisable to consult a reliable Liferay development company to know more about this concept and other enterprise-friendly features of Liferay DXP.

Concluding Lines
ContCentric is a reputed Liferay development services provider. We provide customized, robust, and cost-effective web solutions using the Liferay DXP version to our corporate clients. Apart from Liferay DXP upgrade and portal development services, we also offer consultancy, support, and maintenance services.

If you want to get a customized web solution for simplifying complex processes of your business, then you can drop us a line at hello@contcentric.com. Our expert Liferay consultants will get back to you soon.

We witness continuous changes in the business scenario, technology domain, and customer expectations. It is, therefore, necessary to transform your enterprise digitally and address the user’s requirements effectively. You can offer the omnichannel digital experience to your across various channels by taking assistance from the document management company.

Why Unified Experience is necessary?
Today’s tech-savvy customers expect unified and engaging experiences across all the devices. If you want to keep your company ahead of the curve in the growing competition, you need to put your customers first and provide them unified experience. What’s more, employees and stakeholders also like unified digital experience in all the processes with the help of a centralized document management system.

Technological advancements assist enterprises to transform internal operations into an excellent digital experience to the customers. Simply put, this transformation is based on delivering the right piece of content to the right audience in a unified way. Let’s compare the Content Management System (CMS) and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) to understand which one is in a better position to help modern enterprises meet the customer’s expectations and needs.

But before comparing them, let’s have brief information about both CMS and DXP.

What is CMS?
As a centralized system, the CMS assists companies to organize the content. It can be used for building the backend of the corporate website. Users or visitors can view the content with the help of CMS. A robust CMS can enable you to publish, manage, and control all types of content across both web and mobile channels. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are popular content management systems worldwide.

What is DXP?
The content management company also offers a digital experience platform to enable SMEs and large companies to deliver engaging experiences to the customers. The DXP is also a centralized platform and it can handle multiple integrations at once. Mostly, DXPs have built-in CMS capabilities. Some of the renowned digital experience platforms are Liferay DXP and Sitecore.

Major Difference between DXP and CMS
When it comes to providing in-depth customer experiences, DXP knows no competition! Do you want to know the key differences between CMS and DXP? Though there is a little overlap between these two from the functionality perspective, here we will attempt to differentiate DXP and CMS.

A DXP can better take care of the asset and content management at a large scale. It is possible to sync, manage, and publish the content across different platforms with the help of DXP. Be it a mobile platform or web portal and IoT devices, the DXP helps the users to publish content anywhere.

A reliable document management company can develop robust DXP solutions and multiple microsites to help eCommerce companies launch their projects. There, traditional CMS falls short of providing the best results. It is fair to mention that DXP has an upper hand over CMS for delivering digital experiences across various channels or platforms. Also, DXP can provide unified experience across all the devices.

Also Read- How to Choose the Right Platform between Alfresco and Liferay

DXP or CMS- What should be your choice?
CMS is fine for your enterprise if you do not consider digital platforms for distributing content. But, if you are looking for rich and personalized experience together with uniformity, then you need an advanced and sophisticated solution. There, the DXP steps in. It is indeed one step ahead of a CMS. Here the questions arise- why does your document management system need a DXP? Does your brand benefit from it?

The answer to these questions is- the DXP can help your enterprise offer an omnichannel customer experience. Let’s go through key benefits of DXP that help your brand to become successful online.

Strengthening Relationships
DXP can make your relationships stronger with existing and new customers. Both small and large enterprises can take benefits of DXP and develop productive relationships with the target audience throughout the lifecycle.

Offering omnichannel experiences
We have already discussed that DXP can provide an omnichannel experience. When your brand offers customers the same experience across multiple devices, you can certainly boost the sales and gain the customer’s trust.

Enabling integrations
The DXP can be readily integrated with existing and new data. You can easily optimize content and manage different document management systems through a centralized DXP while delivering engaging experiences.

Providing multiple touchpoints
The DXP enables you to address the customer’s requirements across various touchpoints. As a result, you can get a higher conversion rate.

The CMS offers limited access and scope for personalized customer experience. CMS is more useful for developing a user-friendly website as a whole rather than offering a personalized experience. It is not possible for CMS to get connected to various platforms and devices. These days, the IoT trend is on the rise and the CMS cannot enable you to make the most of connected devices.

Concluding Lines
In a nutshell, if you want your enterprise to remain competitive amid increasing challenges, it is better to choose a DXP. You can provide personalized content with a connected digital experience to your customers. A renowned content management company can help you find ways to get the most suitable DXP solution for your diverse business requirements.