After a bit of effort I now have some basic JSF pages working.

One error that stumped me for a good while was the following

javax.faces.el.PropertyNotFoundException:

Can't instantiate class .... This came about from a backing bean I was tryign to configure from my face-config.xml <managed-bean-name> Menubar </managed-bean-name> <managed-bean-class> com.aol.beans.jsf.Menubar </managed-bean-class> <managed-bean-scope> application </managed-bean-scope> <managed-property> <description>List of items to appear in the MenuBar and privilages, these get localised to menu.</description> <property-name>itemsAndPrivilegeLevel</property-name> <property-class>java.lang.String[]</property-class> <list-entries> <value>home,1</value> <value>profile,1</value> <value>performance,1</value> <value>transaction,1</value> <value>reference,1</value> <value>sysAdmin,3</value> <value>production,2</value> <value>logout,1</value> </list-entries> </managed-property> </managed-bean> Basically I was trying to set the itemsAndPrivilegeLevel parameter in the bean. The problem was I hadn't created a getItemsAndPrivilegeLevel method in the bean. I dodn't think I needed one (I don't), but apparently either JSF or the beans specification think different, so I have to have that method there.