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A web portal is a web site that provides a starting point, a gateway, or portal, to other resources on the Internet or an intranet. Portals are also known as "enterprise information portals" (EIP).Portals typically provide personalized capabilities to their users. They are designed to use distributed applications different numbers and types of middleware and hardware to provide services from a number of different sources. In addition, business portals are designed to share collaboration in workplaces. A further business-driven requirement of portals is that the content be able to work on multiple platforms such as personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and cell phones.
1 Types of web portals
'Mega' web portals (or 'internet portals' or 'public portals') provide a broad range of features, services, content, and commercial partnerships. They typically run search engines (or have another engine, often Google, provide the service on their page) and have a collection of Google, provide the service on their page) and have a collection of hyperlinks sorted into categories and subcategories. Examples include: Yahoo![1], Netscape Netcenter [2], and My.Oracle.com [3].
'Vertical', or ' niche', web portals (also known as "vortals") focus on a specialized audience and/or topic. Examples are:
The META Group defines a number of other uses of the term "web portal" including:
- Portal interface - A contextual, dynamic interfaceIn general usage, an interface is the point, area, or surface along which two substances or other qualitatively different things meet; it is also used metaphorically for the juncture between items. The word interface is sometimes (perhaps only in engineer. This is usually a web user interface.
- Portal website - A website with a contextual, dynamic interface. Generally involves personalization and web pages divided up into subsections of screen real estate into which portletPortlets are reusable Web components that display relevant information to portal users. Examples for portlets are: Email Weather Discussion forum News Portlet standards enable developers to create portlets that can be plugged in any portal supporting thes are plugged.
- Portal framework - A pre-integrated set of the services used to build portal interfaces.
- Enterprise portal - A portal that spans horizontal ( technologyTechnology ( Gr. tau;εχνολογια < τεχνη "craftsmanship" + λογος "word, reckoning" + the suffix ια) has more than one definition. features) and vertical (organizational functions) dimensions.
- Employee portal - A personalized intranet, accessible only by a company's employees.
- Customer portal - A personalized Internet site created by a company so that its customers can get information and transact with the company.
2 Features
The Open Directory ProjectThe Open Directory Project ODP , also known as DMoz (for D irectory. Moz illa, the domain name of ODP), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Time Warner that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer ed requires that sites listed as a "portal" contain these features:
- Search Engine/Directory
- Groupware and Collaboration
- Knowledge Management
- Content Management
- Work Flow
- Multi Channel Facilities
- Single Sign On
- Business Intelligence and Integration of Applications
- Identity Management Integration
- Infrastructure Functionality
