Portlet Lifecycle in uPortal and WSRP

Deployed – This is effectively reading the portlet.xml and noting that said portlet exists. This is basically the “Portlet Registry” and the best way to get in here is to have a portlet.xml (i.e. it is not easily “fakable”). In Sakai this is effectively the same as being regfistered in a tool (i.e. visible in mercury).
Published – After a portlet is loaded, it is published. The notion of published is a “UPortal” notion and indicates that something is subscribable. When published, a portlet can be published to selected groups. Publishing is comething done by admins generally.
Subscribed – This is a situation where the portlet has an entity – someone – either an end user or an owner of a tab has selected the published channel from a list and indicated a placement without the layout. Subscribed is more of a “layout” notion. For Sakai this is roughtly equivalent to a placement.
While the portlet is running, it has a weindow ID. This structure holds items like Poetlet mode and Window state.