2024 was an exciting year for me at Liferay. I joined the Liferay Enablement team, an incredible group of professionals who I can confidently call Liferay rockstars. Under the leadership of the amazing Hanna Ilén, this team has inspired me every step of the way, and it's a privilege to be part of such a passionate, talented, and innovative group.

At Devcon 2024 in Budapest, Hanna shared some of the phenomenal achievements we made this year. Starting from scratch, in just a few weeks, we created a new course titled “Building Enterprise Websites with Liferay.” This course was designed to empower Liferay partners and personnel with timely, relevant, and practical training on Liferay’s latest capabilities. Delivered in a bootcamp format, this three-day course has reached a global audience:

• 25 sessions delivered in 12 countries/15 cities worldwide and 6 different languages
• Attended by almost 900 practitioners - partners and Liferay employees, including developers, consultants, sales engineers, product people, engineers, and more eager to deepen their expertise

The training focused on building a website for a fictitious company, Clarity Vision Solutions, leveraging the wealth of Liferay's latest out-of-the-box-features and Low-Code/No-Code capabilities. Feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive, with many expressing excitement that Liferay is investing in robust training once again. Here’s some specific feedback we received from some of the participants:

• "This day, even if it’s covering familiar concepts, has already been great. It’s leagues ahead of the last training I took 6 years ago, and it is already helping me to understand concepts better than before." – US Partner
• "A shout-out to Liferay’s Search capabilities! I didn’t realize how powerful the Search features are, I am very excited to apply this new knowledge in my work." – Brazilian Partner
• "I am excited to talk to our customers, currently on 6.2, about moving to 7.4 and this new model." – French Partner
• "The bootcamp provided helpful information for our broad range of students. We had beginners, who received an excellent overview of how Liferay works and how things should be done within the platform. Also our seasoned Liferay experts, who could challenge their views and experiences with you in a highly constructive and helpful way. Your expertise and enthusiasm made the sessions engaging and learning process both effective and fun." – German Partner

But that’s not all—this course is now available for free on learn.liferay.com. The course includes comprehensive materials, exercises, and an accompanying GitHub repository. This ensures that clients, partners, and the broader Liferay community can benefit from the training at their own pace.

In addition, we’ve also launched another key course: “Mastering Liferay Workspaces and Tooling”—a deep dive into development tools like Liferay Workspace, CLI, and IDEs. This course is also available on learn.liferay.com and is free for all.

A Look Ahead: Roadmap for 2025

As we reflect on our 2024 milestones, we’re already hard at work on the roadmap for 2025. Here’s what we’re excited to deliver:

• Mastering Data Modeling with Liferay Objects
  Expanding on the Clarity example to showcase best practices for data persistence and access using Liferay Objects.
   

• Mastering Liferay Client Extensions
  Demonstrating how to utilize various Liferay Client Extensions in real-world implementations like Clarity.
   

• Mastering Liferay Design Elements
  Covering custom Fragments, Stylebooks, Templates, and Frontend Client Extensions to build rich, dynamic UIs.
   

• Mastering Liferay’s Headless API
  Teaching how to develop and consume Liferay Headless APIs for integrations and external applications.

These new courses will roll out gradually during the coming months, with the first expected already in early January - if not sooner.

A Call to Action

If you’re a Liferay developer, partner, or client, now is the perfect time to dive into the free courses available on learn.liferay.com. These courses aim to equip you with best practices to maximize your investment in Liferay and accelerate your implementation timelines. Even though the courses are free, we encourage you to create an account and sign in so you can track your progress, collect course badges, and more.

Stay tuned for the new courses as they launch, and join us on this journey of learning and innovation. Together, we can unlock the full potential of Liferay, streamline implementations, and bring your ideas to market faster than ever before!

About the Author: Dave Nebinger is a Lead Solution Architect with Liferay, with over 9 years of experience working for Liferay and over 18 years of experience with Liferay technology and the Liferay Community.