| I fail to see the difference here between 'portal' and 'website'
It's like saying there's no difference between the word "vehicle" and "car".
A portal is a specific type of website, if you like, just as a gateway is a
specific type of website.
| apart from the use of a sexier, grant attracting word. Any half
| decent corporate/institutional website should have all the above
| goals as part of its design. I feel its a misuse of the term
| 'portal', but then I'm a pedant.
I always think of a portal as being not merely links to information held
elsewhere, but as an entity which aggregates that information and which
attempts, as far as possible, to present it in a consistent and easy to use
fashion. So a good portal will incorporate as much information as possible
relevant to the audience you're targeting it at - including things like news
headlines, as you mention.
What's more it must be possible for members of that audience to customise
the portal and select which information they are interested in. This
customisability is one of the defining features of a portal and is one of
the functional aspects which sets it apart from other types of website.
| >We have subsumed within our organisational portal definition the
| >need for integration with information
| >systems such as student record systems, learning materials and the
| >appropriate delivery of same.
|
| So its a website with a VLE (!). Virtual Learning Environment.
We had a very interesting presentation from iPlanet a while ago, where the
chap extolled the virtues of portals, and how you can use them to construct
communities of people with similar interests, and then exploit, erm I mean
leverage, them.
He used a most unfortunate term to describe this type of website - a "sticky
portal" - given the entirely non-academic activities some of our
undergraduates have been caught getting up to in workareas here ...
Cheers,
Chris
--
Chris Tilbury, UNIX Systems Administrator
IT Services, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
PHONE: 024 7652 3365 / FAX: 024 7652 3267
MAIL : [log in to unmask]
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