Commonly referred to as simply a portal, a Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls. The first Web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the Web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience.

What is a web portal?
Web portals provide a single point of access to a variety of content and core services, and ideally offer a single sign-on point. Portals give you a managed online experience, and can be particularly helpful as a start and return point for those new to the web. Portal content is dynamically managed through databases, application windows, and sometimes cookies. Portals often include calendars and to-do lists, discussion groups, announcements and reports, searches, email and address books, and access to news, weather, maps, and shopping, as well as bookmarks. Web portals often organize information into channels, customizable page containers where specific information or an application appears. Channels make it easy to locate information of interest by categorizing content.

Web portals offer advantages over home pages because they can offer user-specific, customized views. For example, a university's web portal could offer customized, specific content available to you based on your roles (e.g., faculty, student, staff, and administrator). Roles help the portal determine your privileges for reading, searching, updating, adding channels, and personalizing content. The portal uses the information stored in the roles to offer the appropriate content and service choices. You can then create further, more specific content organization by selecting from the personalized material and services, thus making the portal work the way you do.