Found the problem, but I'm really not sure of good solution :) Because we're using the relaxed checking it tries to do a substitution on a null string. We figure out the capabilities (which handles the markupTypes) before we do the MetaInfo and PortletInfo so we could use the first locale in the capabilities as the default, or we could simply default to English, but I'm not sure how great either of those two options are. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4162326#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...