What is portal? | Definition from TechTarget (2024)

What is a portal?

1) Portal is a term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web or that users tend to visit as an anchor site. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals. Some major general portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET, Microsoft Network, and America Online's AOL.com. Examples of niche portals include Garden.com (for gardeners), Fool.com (for investors), and SearchNetworking.com (for network administrators).

A number of large access providers offer portals to the Web for their own users. Most portals have adopted the Yahoo style of content categories with a text-intensive, faster loading page that visitors will find easy to use and to return to. Companies with portal sites have attracted much stock market investor interest because portals are viewed as able to command large audiences and numbers of advertising viewers.

Typical services offered by portal sites include a directory of Web sites, a facility to search for other sites, news, weather information, e-mail, stock quotes, phone and map information, and sometimes a community forum. Excite is among the first portals to offer users the ability to create a site that is personalized for individual interests.

The term portal space is used to mean the total number of major sites competing to be one of the portals.

2) In fantasy games, science-fiction, and some "New Age" philosophies, a portal is a gateway to another world of the past, present, or future, or to an expanded awareness.

3) In 3-D graphics development, portal rendering is a technique that increases the effect of realism and speeds up presentation.

This was last updated in December 2021

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What is portal? | Definition from TechTarget (2024)

FAQs

What is portal? | Definition from TechTarget? ›

1) Portal is a term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web or that users tend to visit as an anchor site. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals.

What is a portal in technology? ›

Portal technology refers to the use of centralized portals to expose underlying functionality of a system. A portal acts as a doorway, allowing the underlying functionality (which is often quite complex) to be presented and used in a much more user-friendly manner.

What is the full meaning of portal? ›

1. : door, entrance. especially : a grand or imposing one. 2. : the whole architectural composition surrounding and including the doorways and porches of a church.

How do you describe a portal? ›

A portal is a high-traffic website with a wide range of content, services and vendor links.

What is a portal in software engineering? ›

A portal is a web-based platform that collects information from different sources into a single user interface and presents users with the most relevant information for their context.

What is a portal vs website? ›

A website is a location present on the internet with various web pages that one can access via its URL. A web portal is a point of access in which the content is only available for a set of specific users.

What is an example of a portal? ›

Some major general portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET, Microsoft Network, and America Online's AOL.com. Examples of niche portals include Garden.com (for gardeners), Fool.com (for investors), and SearchNetworking.com (for network administrators).

What is a portal in simple words? ›

A portal is a large and imposing gate or doorway. You're likely to find a portal in a castle, in a cathedral, or even on an internet site. Portal can be used to describe other types of doorways, both literal and metaphorical. For example, portal can refer to a web page that provides access to other sites on the web.

What is a portal system simple definition? ›

The portal venous system and hepatic veins are a paired network of valveless veins responsible for blood from all of the abdominal viscera, excluding the kidneys and adrenal glands. Before reaching the heart the blood collected by the tributaries of the portal vein passes through the hepatic sinusoids.

What is the meaning of portal in engineering? ›

Portal is a structural element that is commonly used in the construction and building industry to provide support and stability to large openings or spans.

What is a platform vs portal? ›

Platforms provide extended, advanced functionality enriching the standard web stack. A portal is where you go to access a service. The service will be running on a platform. Both are very broad terms and, while generally, these days, used to refer to the web, that does not necessarily need to be the case.

What is the difference between a portal and an intranet? ›

While an intranet is solely a resource for employees, a customer experience portal allows a role-based (permissions-based) site that gives both customers and company team members an area to interact with other customers, your team, and your brand.

What is the difference between software and portal? ›

In summary, the Company Portal shows Configuration Manager-deployed applications for all co-managed clients that use it, while Software Center allows users to install and manage software on their devices.

What is a portal in SaaS? ›

The SaaS client portal gives you and your employees an intuitive dashboard, an easy-to-use calendar, and the ability to view and manage product updates, customer data, and support resources quickly and efficiently.

Is an API a portal? ›

Application Programming Interface (API) portals enable companies to easily share information and data across real-time, distributed cloud and mobile applications, similar to the way the App Store offers a place for iPhone users to download and use apps.

What is a CRM portal? ›

CRM Portal Meaning

It is a technology platform to help organizations manage their customer relationship management practices and programs. CRM portals are a section of your CRM system that is broken down into little chunks for your customers and partners to access.

What is the difference between a gateway and a portal? ›

Payment portal is simply the interface for making the payment for anything and payment gateway is the e-commerce application through which we can make payment in online business.

Is Google an example of a portal? ›

A web portal is a website that provides a broad array of services, such as search engines, e-mail, online shopping, and forums. American web portals included Pathfinder, Excite, Netscape's Net Center, Go, NBC, MSN, Lycos, Voila, Yahoo!, and Google Search.

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