Absolute newbie conceptual question

[Q B <qu...@yahoo.com>]

Hi all, 
I've just joined this list, after I've downloaded and played with Jetspeed 1.4. I must admit that I'm a bit mystified by this product, and that's why I'm forced to bug you with my questions. 
First, allow me to say that I'm quite familiar with frameworks in general. I've been using a number of frameworks in the past three or four years, and have even designed and built several frameworks of my own. Of the better known ones, my favorite are Castor, Velocity, Struts, etc. 
However, when it comes to Jetspeed, I wasn't really able to make the heads or tails out of it. Yes, I was able to get it to work with Tomcat 4 (although for some reason it failed to run under Resin 1.2.0). I was even able to compile my first simple portlet and to drop it into the local-portlets.xreg in the WEB-INF/conf folder. thus, i was able to add this portlet while logged on as 'turbine' user. However, I get stuck after that, as the framework does not behave as specified in the online tutorial. After adding the portlet, it does not get displayed anywhere. At that point, I get totally confused, and I'm forced to realize that I don't understand this framework. 
To begin with, how do I create my own custom portal using Jetspeed? I'm not so much interested in how to modify the Jetspeed portal, as I am in how to create my own portal, so that I could fool around and learn about this product.

Once I learn how to build my own portal from scratch, I'd like to get started on adding my portlets to it. Finally, I'd like to try my hand with the syndication, and adding RSS.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could point me in the right direction, as I'm utterly clueless here. I've tried to search for these instructions on the web, but to no avail. For some reason, all the Jetspeed tutorial teach how to modify the existing Jetspeed portal, which is pretty useless to me.

Thanks so much in advance!



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