I know the title should probably read "What's new in 4.4.0", or even "4.4.1" (which was just released). But, we've made so many fixes after those two releases that it's worth it to skip right ahead to 4.4.2 (which will likely be out next month).

This will likely be the case moving right up to 5.0, but if I wait till then I'll have so much to write about it'll be to much of a chore to try and sort it all out...

We're really [i]cooking with butter[/i] over the last couple months and it all makes me very excited about Liferay like I hadn't been since we hit 4.0.0...

I mean, Liferay for me is a real love affair... but like every good love affair there is adversity that inevitably makes you wonder what it is about the relationship that keeps you in it... then things start to come into focus... and you remember.

Anyway, the last couple months have reminded me of why I'm in this relationship.

So, here are a couple features that are only the bigginning of a long list of new and/or improved ones you're likely to start hearing about.

1. Syndicated feed creation from the Journal portlet.

I really think that many people will like this. It's not so much a feature that users were calling for, per say, but one that we often ended up building out for clients (via some funky xsl/vm templates, and which over the years we've done in various different ways. This one is a little more integrated, and feature rich.

What aspects does this new feature support you ask? Many actually!

• Create as many named feeds as you like.
• The same feed types that we provide from other portlets; RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0.
• Constrain feed items based on "Article Type" and/or "Structure" and/or "Template"
• Ordering.
• Max items per request.
• Content rendering options:
  ∘ Article Description
  ∘ Completely rendered article using article's default template
  ∘ Completely rendered using "named" alternate template
  ∘ Specify a particular structure field as the content of items:
    ‣ If the type of the field is "Document Library" the feed will properly create either Atom reference links, or RSS enclosures. (Can you say PODCASTING???)
• Integration with published content.
  ∘ If an article is published somewhere in the target Community, the feed item url will point to that page, otherwise the item will be displayed on the specified page.
  ∘ If you want even more control, you can specify a specific Journal Content portlet on the target page where the item content will be loaded.
• Virtual Hosting friendly URLs.

What's still missing?

As of right now, one of the only missing features is specifying a feed image. (Of course, I'm prepared to admit to/implement other missing features if they are pointed out to me :). )

We still have to build out syndicated feeds for the Asset framework, but that will come, as it's the next logical feature advancement in syndicated publishing.

2. RSS Portlet Facelift.

The RSS portlet got a recent facelift.

I personally think it's much nicer, has more options... and Nate really made it nifty by fixing up my crappy CSS by adding some cool icons everywhere. We haven't added support for Atom reference links, or RSS enclosures yet (podcasting support). You can still specify any number of feeds in a single RSS portlet.

You can even customize the display by including a "header" or "footer" Journal Article in the portlet. Huh?

This give lots of freedom to re-purpose/dress up the portlet easily. For example if you wanted to have the feed items represent more complex data than would normally be handled by the typical RSS feed app, you could add some js code in the header/footer article which (re)formats and/or adds functions to feed items based on their content... So, be creative! That's the idea...

Well that's a start. Look for many more features as they crop up on the road to 5.0 and beyond.