Today Liferay released the next version of its flagship software: Liferay Portal 6.2 CE! [Download] [Quick Start]

The Liferay product and engineering teams, in close concert with our awesome community, have spent many months getting the 6.2 release ready, and it is finally here.  "A great platform with polished features to make it easier than ever for you to create web experiences that engage your audience." Sounds great, right? Start your download, and continue reading for the gory details...

Release Nomenclature

Following Liferay's versioning scheme established in 2010, this release is Liferay 6.2 CE GA1.  The internal version number is 6.2.0 (i.e. the first release of 6.2).  Future CE releases of 6.2 will be designated GA2, GA3, .. and so on.  See below for upgrade instructions from 6.1, 6.0, and 5.x.

Downloads

You can find the 6.2 release on the usual downloads page.  If you need additional files (for example, the source code, or dependency libraries), visit the additional files page.

Source Code

As Liferay is an open source project, many of you will want to get at its guts. The source is available as a zip archive on the downloads page, or on its home on GitHub. Many community contributions went into this release, and hopefully many more in future releases! If you're interested in contributing, take a look at our contribution page.

New Features

In addition to the numerous bugs that have been fixed since 6.1, Many new features have gone into this release. Highlights include:

• Updated Support Matrix - Liferay's general policy is to update our support matrix for each release, testing Liferay against newer major releases of supporting operating systems, app servers, browsers, and databases (we reguarly update the bundled upstream open source libraries to fix bugs or take advantage of new features in the open source we depend on).  For example, for 6.2 we are aiming to add support for Websphere 8.5, GlassFish 4.0, JBoss EAP 6.1, Tcat 7.0, Weblogic 12c, Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, DB2 10.1, Postgres 9.1, and others. The final list will be produced once the EE release is ready.
• UI/UX Refinements - Too numerous to list here.  Responsive themes by default, in-context editing, many Mobile enhancements (including mobile previews), Control Panel awesomeness, a revamped Dockbar (with Notifications support), an easy to use and unobtrusive "Add" function on the sidebar (which drastically reduces the number of clicks for most content operations), and the new default "classic" theme all add up to a sweet UX improvement. A lot of polish has gone into this release, and you will see it immediately on first glance, but there are many subtle changes that will improve your daily lives. A lot of it comes from upgrading to AlloyUI 2.0 (and Bootstrap 2.3.2) and a focus on the user experience.
• Staging Improvements, including a sweet publishing preview, background publishing, validation, and a revamped staging administrative interface.
• Improved Marketplace support. A revamped and intuititve management of all custom apps installed on Liferay. 
• Liferay as an OSGi container. A lot of work has gone into Liferay in support of OSGi and its modularization features. While we have not yet reached OSGi nirvana (and there is not yet documentation), you can deploy and manage OSGi components with Liferay. For more detail about what's under the hood, check out Radio Liferay Episode 34.
• Site Hierarchies. Easily organize sites in a hierarchial relationship, allowing easy content sharing and navigation.
• The Recycle Bin. Recover deleted per-site content quickly and painlessly. Quick undo. Automatic flushing, and full search.
• An easy to use web content structure editor and a template editor with auto-complete, structure field access, a palette of commonly used Liferay services, and syntax highlighting for Freemarker and Velocity templates. In addition, managing web content gets easier with a revamped interface for managing content, structures, and templates through a hierarchy of folders, drag and drop, and more.
• I18N enhancements including localizable friendlyUrls, a super-easy and consistent way to enter translations for multi-language fields, localizable custom content type field names and web content structure field names, and more! Liferay is now translated into over 45 languages thanks to our tireless community contributors.
• Document Management. With 6.2, you can now subscribe to folders to be notified of changes, and drag-n-drop multiple files from your desktop into the library with ease.
• A revamped calendar with major UI and functionality enhancements, including personal calendars, site calendars, event invites, resource management, a responsive UI, and much more.
• In-place blog editing. Seriously? Yep.
• Ever override one of Liferay's built-in application's JSPs to customize its display? You probably cried a little when faced with an upgrade. No more, with Application Display Templates you can easily override Liferay's apps' displays using custom Freemarker or Velocity templates.
• Web Forms and Dynamic Data Lists get new field types like documents, images, rich content, and more. You can also have repeatable fields. Power users: rejoice!
• Enhancements for Liferay IDE - It's never been easier to develop for the Liferay Platform, using the latest features of Liferay 6.2 and the Liferay IDE version 2.0.  IDE Enhancements include Maven support (yay!), theme creation wizards, proper Freemarker template debugging, creating Control Panel portlets, and much more. The new IDE version will be available very soon after this CE release.
• Better Scalability and Performance, including a Portlet Sandboxing feature to isolate portlet execution into separate JVMs and separate servers using an efficient over-the-wire protocol (EE only).
• Better Auditing, Analytics (including Piwik and custom analytics engine support), Management and Monitoring
• Better Documentation
• Better Security , including the ability for Liferay to act as an OAuth 1.0 server (EE only) 
• Better Quality
• ... And more!

Documentation

Plugins and the Marketplace

With the advent of the Liferay Marketplace, plugins are now decoupled from the core platform, and are released (and updated) separately. All Liferay-authored plugins have been updated to declare support for 6.2, and will be installable (and supported) on this release. There may be a few (e.g. the Zoe themes) which will take a little more time to bake in the 6.2 oven.

If you or your company have published plugins on the Marketplace, and are interested in updating your plugins for this release, be sure to check out the process in this post.

Bug Reporting

Upgrading

Good news for those of you on 6.0 or prior! Liferay introduced the seamless upgrade feature with Liferay 6.1. Seamless upgrades allow Liferay to be upgraded more easily. In most cases, pointing the latest version of Liferay to the database of the older version is enough. There are some caveats though, so be sure to check out the Upgrading Liferay chapter of the Liferay User Guide for more detail on upgrading to 6.2.

Getting Support

Support for Liferay 6.2 CE comes from the wonderful and active community, from which Liferay itself was nurtured into the enterprise offering it is today.  Please visit the community pages to find out more about the myriad avenues through which you can get your questions answered.

Liferay and its worldwide partner network also provides services, support, training, and consulting around its flagship enterprise offering, Liferay Portal 6.2 EE, which is due to be released shortly after this CE release.

Also note that customers on existing releases such as 6.0 and 6.1 continue to be professionally supported, and the documentation, source, and other ancillary data about these releases will remain in place.

What's Next?

Of course we in the Liferay Community are interested in your take on the new features in Liferay 6.2.  Work has already begun on the next evolution of Liferay, based on user feedback and community ideas.  If you are interested in learning more about how you can get involved, visit the Liferay Community pages and dig in.

Kudos!