Web Portals

Description

What is a Web Portal?

A web portal, known more simply just as a portal, is a specially designed website that gathers and presents information in a diverse or personalized way.

A portal can be enriched with services and tools including search engine APIs for intranet or Internet search, email, news, group communication/forums, or dashboards and business mashups that bring together information, tools, and applications. Many implementations of portals include the requirement to register to access gated content.

The name “portal” actually has a very interesting history, coming from the Latin “portal” or “city gate.” This name is apt, as a web portal is essentially a gateway: to more information, gated content or services, eCommerce listings, or search results. Moving further, a portal’s goal is to deliver organized and/or personalized access to large amounts of content or services.

What is the difference between a Website and Web Portal

The difference between a web portal and vs website may not be obvious at face value – after all, both present information in what appears to be an organized way – but a web portal makes that information more interactive.

A website can have a huge depth of information (for example, some blogs), and content that can be narrowed down with categories or tags, but this is very much a one-way flow of information all contained on one website. A web portal, in contrast, allows users to find or link out to information or services across many web properties as well as to interact (use a calculator, drag elements on a dashboard) or input information for custom outputs.

Although websites can become quite visually sophisticated, a portal is a kind of web app that takes advantage of a more complex, modular design in order to be able to deliver a customized experience back to the user. Many portals are created behind a registration system (e.g. an intranet), but this is not always the case.