I was introduced to WebDAV the other day, and I thought it would be great to use my first blog post to tell other people about it also.

What is WebDAV?

Think of it as a way to upload, download, and edit files located in your document library and image gallery from the convenience of your desktop.

How to get started.

For this tutorial, I'll be using Liferay 5.0.1 on Windows XP. There are some known problems with Windows implementation of WebDAV, but but hopefully these instructions will work for you.

1. Add the Document Library portlet to your page.

2. Make a note of the of the WebDAV URL.

3. Open up My Network Places on your computer.

4. Under Network Tasks, click Add a network place. The Add Network Place Wizard should pop up.

5. Click Next until you see the screen below. Select Choose another network location and click Next

6. For the Internet or network address, enter the WebDAV URL (from step 2) and click Next.

7. When the login prompt pops up, enter your email address and password. (Note: If you're using Liferay 4.4.x, you should use your user ID number as the user name.)

8. Continue clicking Next/finish until the wizard is done. You should now have a new folder in your My Network Places to your document library. The folder will behave just like a local folder. You can get files, drag files into document library, delete files, create directories, etc.

Note: You can't add files to the root directory of your document library. So, create at least one sub-directory.