Everything You Need to Know About What a Web Portal Is

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Using the Internet is already integral to everyday life – just looking for a certain type of information, or even buying a product, so many people want to understand types of web portals with examples. And in this article, we will help you with this.

What is a web portal?

To start, it's important to understand what a web gateway is. A web portal is a collection of online sites that is owned and updated by a single person or business. A web portal, then, is a web host that offers a customized landing page.

The portal wants to be a location that opens up using the Internet browser. It provides free services like customized news subjects or an email account for this reason. Such a website draws a lot of people and serves as their portal to the Internet. Because of the massive influx of advertising and the high traffic of the node, it turns out to be very profitable to restrict it.

The ability to search the systematic catalog is an additional service provided by the library, and its level is directly dependent on the qualifications of the compilers. Usually, the reader begins the development of the topic by studying the catalog, and then already accumulates the necessary set of bibliographic references.

As you can see, the idea is not new at all, but in the application to the Web, it turned out to be very fruitful. In confirmation, we will cite a well-known fact: in the first four months of the existence of Yahoo!(from June to September 1996) there was a more than 50% increase in the number of visits to this Website. The new service turned out to be in demand for a certain type of information. There is no need to argue the clear benefits and drawbacks of each approach.

So, all types of web portals have the following features:

  • Direct access to all posted information.
  • Unified access to all applications.
  • Availability of data search tools.
  • Expandability, and application integration.
  • Publication of documents, and document flow support.
  • Availability of documentation catalogs.
  • Support for group work of users.
  • Management of user groups.
  • Personalization of access.

What is a web portal


Types of web portals

Talking about what a web portal is, it is necessary to know that there are different types of web portals with examples, according to what you want, they can be designed in one way or another to be able to use the potential that is needed according to the needs of the company or the person.

Virtual communities may recognize some portals because they are more common than others, but knowing the different types is never too much:

Horizontal portals

These are the ones that are designed (designed) for any type of user, they are ideal for those who do not know much about using portals because it is very intuitive and basic.

One of its distinguishing features is that they have an organization through categories, usually found at the top, in some cases they have internal search engines to facilitate the location of data.

Vertical portals

These are websites (websites) that provide information on a certain topic and allow access to a large amount of related content within it, often known as a niche, because everything on the page (page) is related in some way connected

The purpose of this option is to satisfy the user without having to visit other sites. Examples of these types of portals include music, employment, real estate, art, and sports pages.

Specialized portals

Specialized portals

Unlike the other two, this type of portal arises due to the need to have specialized and high-quality information on a certain topic, usually vertical portals of this type do not touch niches.

With the information, these types of sites typically offer, the positioning process tends to be a little more specialized because they don't cover very common topics. An example of these types of portals are those that specialize in such topics as: education, geographic areas, and hobbies.

Corporate portals

They are an extension of what a company is, so when talking about what a web portal is, and especially of this type, it is easy to understand that they have information about their products or services for customers and suppliers.

They are often used for educational development, as they allow teachers to upload the information they require young people to have available. On these portals, we can find portals for different groups of users.

A typical corporate portal consists of three functional layers:

  • Basic infrastructure. Ensures the operation of the security system, portal management, transactions. The basic infrastructure includes a Web server, database servers, and application servers.
  • Application integration. Responsible for the interaction of the portal with various company systems, DBMS, CRM, ERP, etc.
  • The layer includes CSM for information content management, as well as tools for working with wireless and mobile devices, services for exchanging data with business partner projects, portlets (software modules).

What to expect from portals in the future?

Currently, portals have essentially evolved into a way to connect internal corporate operations to those of partners and clients. Future portals will really be able to integrate data and applications, which is essential for productive communication with partners and clients.

An important role in the functions of the portals will be played by the support of mobile devices, which allows users to replace traditional desktop computers with them and get the possibility of constant access to the services provided by them. It should also be noted that one of the main trends, according to Digiteum, in the development of portals is the use of information management tools in them, which allows the portal to implement its aggregation function.

In terms of technology, we should expect the portals to use the capabilities presented today by modern application servers and DBMS, especially support for application integration technologies such as XML Web services. In addition, we can probably hope for the emergence of industrial standards for portal components.

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