Personalization and Customization feature of Portal Server

Here we will talk about what exactly the personalization and customization feature provided by the portal server and what exactly the difference between them.

As per the JSR168 spec
A Portal server may have sophisticated Personalization feature to provide customize content to the users.

A Portal Administrator does personalization whereas the end user does customization.

Let us understand this concept with a practical scenario.

Let us say there are 3 portlets, Portlet P1, P2 and P3.
And there are two portal users say user1 and user2.

Portal Administrator assigns access of portlets to users as below
User1 can access Portlet P1 and P2
User2 can access Portlet P2 and P3

It means whenever user1 logs into the portal , he/she can view only portlet P1 and P2 and if user2 logs in he/she can view portlet P2 and P3.

So we can say that portlet P2 can be seen by user1 and user2 as well.
Once added to a portal page these users can customize ( i.e. portlet preferences or portlet data ) these portlets.

The point to be noted here is:-Content generated by portlet P2 may vary for User1 and User2 , because user1 and user2 can customize Portlet P2 as per their requirement which in turn results for generating different output by the portlet P2.

A portal user can always customize portlets if and only if the portal administrator has assigned proper righs to him/her.