Understanding Liferay's Content and Asset Tools

Across the software industry, you'll find a variety of terms for the processes and technologies used to manage information. The meaning of these terms can vary across contexts and highlight different aspects of the content lifecycle. Liferay primarily categorizes its features under two key capabilities: Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Content Management Systems (CMS).

Digital Asset Management focuses on the lifecycle of file-based resources (e.g., images, PDFs). It includes the processes for creating, storing, retrieving, organizing, distributing, and archiving these files.
Content Management Systems focus on the lifecycle of both structured and unstructured information (e.g., blog posts, call-to-action banners). It involves the tools and processes for authoring, managing, and publishing this content, specifically for use in websites or applications.

While these features and processes are distinct, in practice they are complementary, and a comprehensive content strategy leverages both together. This lesson introduces key Classic CMS applications providing Liferay's content management and DAM capabilities.

NOTE
In Liferay, nearly every piece of information (e.g., blog post, document) is technically considered an "asset." This is because they're all integrated with Liferay's Asset Framework, a core service that provides a consistent set of platform-wide features like search, categorization, and commenting. That said, this course often uses both "assets" and "content" to refer more generally to any digital information.

Liferay's Core DAM and CMS Applications

Liferay's Classic CMS includes a variety of applications for content and asset management. This course focuses on the most central ones you'll use to build and manage your digital experiences.

Web Content: The primary tool for creating structured, reusable content items that are intended primarily for web pages. Examples include news articles, blog posts, banners, announcements, and FAQs.
Documents and Media: The central repository for storing, organizing, and managing file-based assets, like images, PDFs, office documents, and audio files.
Fragments: The building blocks used to design and construct the site pages. They support both inline content authoring and mapping to structured content or digital assets.

Liferay DXP includes a variety of applications for content and asset management.

You can leverage most of these tools within individual Sites or in Asset Libraries. Each application plays a specific role across the different stages of the content lifecycle.

NOTE
Across the industry, "web content" is often used generically to describe any text or media on a website. Examples include articles, images, videos, audio files, and animations. Essentially, it encompasses any content that can be rendered in HTML and presented on a web page. However, this course reserves "web content" for the Liferay application and it's data.

Supporting Capabilities

Beyond these core applications, Liferay's Classic CMS provides several services that support and enhance your content strategy. Leveraging Liferay's Asset Framework, these capabilities work across different content types to ensure your information is well-organized, properly governed, and easily discoverable.

Tags and Categories: These are the core tools for classifying your content and assets. With them, you can can define tags for informal, ad-hoc organization (folksonomy) or define categories for formal, hierarchical structures (taxonomy). Together, they can improve organization and discoverability.
Workflow: Liferay's workflow engine enables you to define and implement content approval processes. With it, you can create specific tasks, actions, and automated notifications to ensure content moves through defined stages with the proper level of visibility.
Search: Liferay's search capabilities connect users with the information they need. Powered by Elasticsearch, it automatically indexes all content and assets and powers highly configurable search experiences. Effective search is a fundamental part of any content solution.

Leveraging these capabilities in your content plan is essential for building well-governed and effective digital experiences.

Alternatives to Liferay's Core Classic CMS Applications

While this course focuses on Liferay's long-standing asset and content management features, there are a few notable alternatives you can consider.

Liferay CMS

Introduced in the 2026.Q1 release, this new CMS provides a centralized, content-centric hub. In contrast to Classic CMS, the new Liferay CMS is Objects-based and designed from the ground up with a headless-first mindset.

In Liferay CMS, you can create Spaces (the new equivalent of asset libraries) to manage content and files, create reusable content structures, collaborate with other users, and view recent activity. You can also build customized content authoring interfaces leveraging Liferay's page-building capabilities. Finally, you can connect spaces to multiple Liferay sites or external systems via headless APIs.

Because Liferay CMS manages its data structures independently from Classic CMS, there is currently no automatic migration. However, keep in mind that Liferay CMS is evolving rapidly and will bridge this feature gap over time.

To learn more about Liferay CMS, consider taking the Mastering Liferay CMS course (Coming Soon).

Objects

Liferay Objects are ideal for managing complex, transactional data. For example, rather than using web content structures, you can leverage objects to build custom business entities and connect them through relationships such as one-to-many (e.g., linking a Job Offer to multiple Job Applications).

The Objects framework supports rich text and allows data to be presented on pages and mapped to collections (though dynamic collections require using Search Blueprints). Furthermore, you can configure friendly URLs for object entries, making their display pages just as SEO-friendly as traditional web content.

To learn more about objects, consider taking the Mastering Data Modeling with Liferay Objects course.

Commerce Entities

Liferay Commerce provides built-in capabilities to manage products, options, and specifications. Even if you're not processing transactions, Commerce products are the perfect choice for describing merchandise details and features (e.g., materials, colors, dimensions). They fully support display pages and include a built-in comparison feature, allowing visitors to view the specifications of multiple products side-by-side. In the context of Liferay Commerce, "content" is organized within catalogs rather than asset libraries or spaces.

To learn more about Liferay Commerce, consider taking the Foundations of Liferay Commerce course.

Conclusion

Liferay provides distinct, powerful tools for both Digital Asset Management and Content Management. Understanding the specific roles of these core applications and supporting capabilities is the first step in building an effective content strategy. Every Liferay project has unique business requirements and user needs. As a result, most solutions use a combination of the capabilities mentioned above.

Next, you'll learn about the core strategic decisions content managers face when starting a project.