A method, article of manufacture, and apparatus for building portlets from templates and managing templates are disclosed. In an embodiment, this comprises providing a portlet template with configuration user interface components; and using the configuration user interface components to present the portlet template to a user. Attributes of the portlet to be configured are displayed to the user, portlet configuration information is obtained from the user, and the portlet configuration information is used to set portlet attributes. In an embodiment, attributes of the portlet template to be configured are displayed to the user, portlet template configuration information is obtained from the user, and the portlet template configuration information is used to update the template descriptor and other template components. In an embodiment, the portlet templates may be built by creating child portlet templates based on parent portlet templates. Child portlet templates inherit the properties and components of the parent portlet templates, and may be extended by overriding properties and components. Properties and components are obtained from the most specific template in which they are found.