Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: terminology questions

Author:Steven Vore
Posted:6/12/2000; 2:28:39 PM
Topic:terminology questions
Msg #:17760 (In response to 17752)
Prev/Next:17759 / 17761

What is a portal?

That's a good question - one for which there appear to be as many answers as there are web users (or at least webmasters who think they're building one).

As a user, I see them as needing to:

As a user, I don't really care if it uses RSS, IRS or PBS as long as it gives me what I want.

A site that I can customize but isn't often-updated is useless to me.

A site that is updated all the time but over which I have no control is (almost) useless to me. Think CNN.com (yes, I know there's also now a my.cnn -- I'm talking about the original "home")

A site that is too difficult to configure is a turn-off, just as Joel describes sw or services that appear to lock-in -- if it's too hard than I just won't bother.

For the longest time, I've used My.Netscape as my news/stocks/wx portal.

I've tried My.Userland, but either I'm too dense or it's intended use is far enough afield from my expecatations for me to be comfortable. Or the configuration process isn't intuitive enough... but I still stop by to see a different set of news.

Have I gotten too far afield yet? ";->"

-Steven



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