Portal

Definition

• A portal is a door or entrance ...

• A web portal is a website that offers various services through a centralized interface.

Typology

• Information portals: news, blogs, etc.
• Transaction portals: sales
• Collaboration portals

Most popular kinds

This is not a strict classification. Some of the entries may also have traits from other categories....

Information portals

• Large Internet access portals, such as Yahoo or MSN
• Information portals such as CNN
• Participatory information portals such as Slahsdot
• Experience sharing portals such as epinions

Commerce and service

• Commerce Portals, such as Amazon
• Service portals, such as Swiss railways

Intranets

• Enterprise portals (frameworks for integrating information, applications, and processes across organizational boundaries)
• Campus-wide information and adminstration systems
• Learning management systems

Community

• Collaborative encyclopedias such as the Wikipedia
• Community of practice portals such as the TECFA portal
• Community of interest portals such linux.
• Educational portals that engage learners in various writing activities (e.g. C3MS and that are at least half open to the public.

Technology-based typology

• Enterprise portals
• Content management systems
• C3MS (Community potals)
• Wikis
• Blogs (at least some that contain more than just diary entries)
• Groupwares

Most open source portalware is based on some sort of LAMP architecture, but java-based architectures are also popular (in particular within computer science communities).