Introduction
A Site Template in Liferay is a reusable plan that outlines a site’s structure, pages, layouts, applications, and optional content. It helps organizations quickly build new sites with a consistent design and functionality. This ensures proper governance and reduces setup time. Common uses include departmental portals, intranets, and microsites that need to maintain the same branding. The main benefits are faster site creation, consistency, and easier maintenance through template updates.
Prerequisites
Liferay DXP/Community
Environment Requirements :
Java
Liferay
Use Cases :
Ensuring a consistent look and feel across multiple sites, such as departmental portals and microsites.
Speeding up the rollout of new sites by reusing an existing template.
Propagating updates to layout or navigation across all sites that come from the template.
Reducing duplication of effort when many similar sites are required.
Create Site Template :
Go to the global menu of Liferay -> Control panel -> Sites -> Site templates
Click on the New button to create a new site template.
Enter a name and description for the template.
Decide if the template is active or inactive. Only active templates show up during site creation.
Determine whether users can change pages that originate from this template.
Toggle Ready for Propagation to turn automatic propagation on or off.
Click on the Save button to create it.
With site templates, you can design and set up templates for making sites. Each template is created using the same tools as the sites.
How to add a site template to a new site :
Go to the global menu of Liferay -> Control panel -> Sites -> Site
Click on the new button to create a site
Custom site templates show in the tab as above image
Select the new site template and provide the site name.
After site creation, it will redirect to the site settings. All the content and pages will be inherited by the new site.
Note : Pages inherited from a template cannot be deleted. You also cannot add child pages to them directly at the site level. They can only be added or removed in the site template.
Propagating Template Changes :
When site template propagation is on, you can change the template’s pages and automatically apply those changes to connected sites. However, if you change a site page that comes from a template, it stops the propagation of template changes to that page. To enable propagation for the page again, you need to discard any changes made to it in the site. If you’ve edited several inherited pages and want to restore propagation from the site template, you must reset changes for each page separately.
To enable or disable propagation
Go to the site template -> Site menu-> Configurations -> Site template settings ->
Pros and Cons :
Pros
Consistency and governance, all sites start from the same trusted base.
Time-saving, there is less manual setup for each new site.
Easier maintenance, updates to the template can roll out to child sites.
Scalability is helpful when managing many sites.
Cons / Limitations
Not all site features are supported through the template. For example, staging, workflow, memberships, teams, and segments are not included.
Over-propagation risk, unwanted changes may affect child sites if not managed carefully.
Flexibility tradeoff, sites based on a template might need different customizations, which can make maintenance more complicated.
Conclusion
Liferay Site Templates offer an effective way to standardize and simplify site creation. They are perfect for organizations that manage multiple sites with shared branding or structure. These templates save time and maintain consistency. However, they require careful planning to balance inheritance with customization and to prevent unintended propagation issues. When used thoughtfully, they greatly improve scalability and governance in site management.
