Difference Between Websites & Portals
A website is a collection of web pages all contained under the same domain name and operated by a specific individual, group or company. A web portal is a type of website consisting mainly of links to other sites.
Other People Are Reading
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Search Portals
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The most common type of web portal is a search portal, or a site with a search engine at the top of the front page and links below it covering news stories, entertainment, stock quotes, sports, services and so on.
Purpose
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The intention of portals is to be a user's "front door" to the entire web. Portals are designed to be set as a browser homepage. Websites as a whole can have a variety of different purposes: marketing, commerce, blogging, reporting, social networking and so on.
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Portal Heyday
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Portals were common in the late 1990s during the dotcom bubble, when dozens of competing search portals included Lycos, Excite, Go, and Altavista. These eventually died out in favor of pared-down search homepages and customized homepages.
Custom Portals
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Instead of portal content determined by an editorial staff, many websites today allow users to create their own customized portal page. Netvibes and Google's "iGoogle" service are two popular examples.
Modern-Day Portals
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Some traditional search portals still exist today, the most popular of which are Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.
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References
- Photo Credit homepage cyan image by phecsone from Fotolia.com
