How to Build a Web Portal

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Web-portals can be easily built with free software; marketing is the most difficult!

Webportals provide the user diverse information in a unified way. Think "Yahoo" or "Google". There is consistent look and feel for different applications.

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At the level which is usually attainable for the individual or small business, web-portals are usually niche or corporate.

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Here is how to build your own web-portal, assuming that you are an individual or small business on a budget.

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Step 1

Assess your goals. What kind of portal are you building? Will it be personal (like Yahoo), regional, or a hobby portal?

What features does your web-portal site need? How will you market it? Who is your target market? What are your skills as a website designer?

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Common features of web portals include chat, classifieds, personal profiles, and photo galleries.

Step 2

Decide on which portal software to implement. Most likely, you will be looking into open source web-portal scripts. Major open-source web-portal scripts include DotNetNuke, UPortal, LifeRay, and Dolphin Community.

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This can be confusing and overwhelming! The resources list at the bottom provides some good starting points.

Step 3

Upload the webportal software to your website and install it according to the script-specific directions. This is the part that requires mysql capabilities, as web-portals run on databases.

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Step 4

Customize the web-portal's look and feel. Script-specific support forums can provide great advice and free templates for the web-portal software you've chosen to implement.

Step 5

Market your web-portal! This may be the most time consuming part, because website marketing is an ongoing and intensive process.

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Advertise your web-portal on every niche site you come across, subscribe to traffic exchanges, and include a link to it as the signature of your email address.

If your portal includes community features such as forums, consider getting a few friends to act like enthusiastic users or make a few different user names to get the community participation rolling.

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