Encyclopedia of portal technologies and applications

Abstract

The increase in the use of technology in daily life activities has led to the growth and popularity of Internet portal sites. Portals are gateways that provide information ranging from general to specific interests. There are four generally recognized classifications of Web portals: (1) horizontal, (2) vertical, (3) enterprise information portals, and (4) B2B portals (Goodman & Kleinschmidt, 2002). Horizontal portals such as Excite, Lycos, MSN, or Yahoo! provide services such as news, entertainment, weather, stock information, e-mail accounts, or provide links to other searching or sponsored sites. Vertical or niche portals (or vortals) provide services to public audiences searching for specific content or interest. Enterprise information portals (also called enterprise resource portals or corporate portals) provide restricted access to private resources of an organization. B2B portals, sometimes referred to as industry portals, are a relatively new phenomenon designed to sell particular goods to consumers online; they are corporate in nature yet vertical in application. Educational Web portals would best fit into the vertical portal category and will be the focus of this article.