Overview

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce

Portals, irrespective of their type, to paraphrase the famous adage about beauty, are essentially all the same under the skin. In other words, much of the perceived variation among different types of portals is mainly on the surface. Although the content, structure, and presentation of portals may vary dramatically, through design and necessity, the underlying precepts, infrastructure, and mechanics of a portal are basically the same for a corporate portal, an Internet call center, a business-to-employee (b2e) intranet portal, a b2b extranet portal, a business-to-consumer (b2c) e-commerce portal, or a self-service portal.

There are basic core functions, such as aggregation, personalization, search, collaboration, and security, that any portal must provide for it to be a bona fide portal as opposed to a "home page" Web site. The exact level of functionality of these core services that will be needed for a given portal may certainly vary among different portal types. This is particularly true when it comes to security, authentication, collaboration, and personalization. An intranet or extranet portal may typically require more security and personalization than a self-service portal dealing with public-domain information (e.g., a state or local government or county court portal). On the other hand, a self-service portal, which deals with personal finances and allows people to pay their bills through it, may require as much security and personalization as an employees-only intranet portal.

The point here is that there will always be functional commonality across portals no matter...