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. In particular, business or educational organizations may centralize all services in some kind of "vertical portal" (with various access rights).

Information

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

expertise and knowledge portals

• Experience sharing portals such as epinions
• Collaborative encyclopedias such as the Wikipedia
• (Specific) knowledge management portals

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

• 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 (application portals)
• Other kinds of application portals
• Content management systems
• C3MS (Community potals)
• Wikis
• Blogs (at least some that contain more than just diary entries)
• Groupwares
• Knowledge management systems

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).