Professional DotNetNuke®5: Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP.NET

Chapter 3. Portal Overview

One of the many advantages of using DotNetNuke is that you can create one installation but have as many child portals as you want. According to Wikipedia, a "web portal is a site that provides a single function via a web page or site. Web portals often function as a point of access to information on the World Wide Web." DotNetNuke has been a successful web portal for global companies running web sites on the Internet, intranet, and extranet as well.

DotNetNuke provides the opportunity to have a portal administrator who is called the host, and as many child portals as needed. Also, additional host accounts can be created for users using the Host Accounts feature. This will give them the same privileges as the host. The URL for the host is http://www.yourdomainname.com. A child portal URL would be http://www.yourdomainname.com/newsite. An administrator is assigned to those sites, and that administrator is called an admin for that site.

As the portal administrator, you may set up hundreds of various web sites on the same portal. To accomplish this task, a child portal is created under the parent (discussed later in this chapter). At runtime, the application will determine the proper content to display based on the PortalID of the portal accessed. This is one of the powerful features of DotNetNuke and has contributed to the rapid growth of the application.

Portal Organization Elements

DotNetNuke portals contain four main organization elements that are examined ...