Webportals provide the user diverse information in a unified way. Think "Yahoo" or "Google". There is consistent look and feel for different applications.
At the level which is usually attainable for the individual or small business, web-portals are usually niche or corporate.
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Here is how to build your own web-portal, assuming that you are an individual or small business on a budget.
Step 1
Assess your goals. What kind of portal are you building? Will it be personal (like Yahoo), regional, or a hobby portal?
What features does your web-portal site need? How will you market it? Who is your target market? What are your skills as a website designer?
Common features of web portals include chat, classifieds, personal profiles, and photo galleries.
Step 2
Decide on which portal software to implement. Most likely, you will be looking into open source web-portal scripts. Major open-source web-portal scripts include DotNetNuke, UPortal, LifeRay, and Dolphin Community.
This can be confusing and overwhelming! The resources list at the bottom provides some good starting points.
Step 3
Upload the webportal software to your website and install it according to the script-specific directions. This is the part that requires mysql capabilities, as web-portals run on databases.
Step 4
Customize the web-portal's look and feel. Script-specific support forums can provide great advice and free templates for the web-portal software you've chosen to implement.
Step 5
Market your web-portal! This may be the most time consuming part, because website marketing is an ongoing and intensive process.
Advertise your web-portal on every niche site you come across, subscribe to traffic exchanges, and include a link to it as the signature of your email address.
If your portal includes community features such as forums, consider getting a few friends to act like enthusiastic users or make a few different user names to get the community participation rolling.