I decided about a year ago I wanted to get my weblog and website fixed and running again.   I went down the Java portal (JSR-168) route, since Java is my strongest language.  After much, much work, I just wasn't able to find a solution I was happy with.  The open source Java portals are all nice, but they all have one limitation or another that I am just not happy with.  I spent many hours trying to fix each portal, to turn it into something I would like.  In the end, I just couldn't find a fit.  At some future date, I'll make an entry covering all the portals I've tried, and the good and bad about each.

About two weeks ago I decided to scrap my Java portal plans and use something I had experience with at work - Plone.
Plone is a content management system (CMS).  It is just excellent at doing that one thing, managing content, and doing it well.  Some of the open source Java portals have CMS capabilities, but none of them are quite feature complete.  Plone is very feature complete, and there are hundreds of add-on "products" that give you other features you may desire.  Plone isn't a portal.  It have much support for dynamic content.   But that's okay, because it does what I need it to do.

Plone is pretty amazing in how quickly you can set up a very nice website.  It looks and works well right out of the box.  I had it up and running nicely in minutes.  Over the next few days I added content and an exellent  "Weblog" product called CoreBlog2.  Within a few more days, I had the theme customized they way I wanted it, and had customized everything to my needs.  I still have a number of things I want to improve, but this is a great start.

I do believe Java portals are going to play a very important role in the future.  The JSR-168 standard, and WSRP are simply too compelling.  I believe they will drive the Java portal platform and make it one of the most-used web platforms in the future.  The open-source portals just aren't quite ready for my needs, without a ton of work on my part.

At any rate, I'm really happy with the results.