If we create a user website in Liferay, we find that it creates a 'Welcome' page on the user dashboard. Liferay creates this page by itself. And for every user, it looks similar, default layout, default color codes, default theme and same content. There are many cases when we need different when we wish to override the defaults with our owns. Or we don't want this page at all. 

Liferay creates public 'Welcome' page to the user site by itself with its default theme, layout, colour scheme and few default portlets over this. Liferay comes with the following properties configuration - 

layout.user.public.layouts.enabled=true
layout.user.public.layouts.auto.create=true

default.user.public.layout.name=Welcome

default.user.public.layout.template.id=2_columns_ii

default.user.public.layout.column-1=82,3
default.user.public.layout.column-2=33
default.user.public.layout.column-3=
default.user.public.layout.column-4=

default.user.public.layout.friendly.url=/home

default.user.public.layout.regular.theme.id=classic
default.user.public.layout.regular.color.scheme.id=01

default.user.public.layouts.lar=${liferay.home}/deploy/default_user_public.lar

If layout.user.public.layouts.enabled and layout.user.public.layouts.auto.create both are true than users will have public layouts and they will be automatically created with the default configuration specified above.

default.user.public.layout.name: Property is used to set the default public layout name. Liferay sets it Welcome by default. 

default.user.public.layout.template.id: Property is used to set the default layout template. You can create your own template layout and can user that's id here instead liferay's default 2_columns_ii.

default.user.public.layout.column-1: Property defines the default portlet in first column of the template layout.

default.user.public.layout.column-2: Property defines the default portlet in second column of the template layout. And so on.

default.user.public.layout.friendly.url: Property is used to set the default friendly URL to the page. Liferay sets /home. 

default.user.public.layout.regular.theme.id: Property sets the default regular theme for the page. Liferay uses classic theme by default. You can change this with your own theme-id to override the default.

default.user.public.layout.regular.color.scheme.id: Sets the default color scheme for the default layout.

default.user.public.layouts.lar: We can set the whole default layout using the lar file. If this property is set, all public layout properties will be ignored by Liferay.