How nice of your IT team =]
If you build it yourself, you're in for a tremendous amount of work to
replicate what vendors do out of the box. The front end isn't really the
biggest part of a portal - it's the authentication, user-management, and
segregated, aggregated content delivery that most of these portals do best.
Might be you don't need any of that, but I would ask if it's really a portal
you want, then...
The best approach I can recommend (I've worked with various portals over the
years, and built a department intranet one from scratch awhile back) is to look
at what you like from the vendors, and build or reproduce what they have,
yourself. Many of them use common conventions which you can borrow as needed.
Portals can be positively HUGE and extremely complex, so as someone mentioned,
see how much the vendors fit the requirements you have, and work on building
what they have, minus what you don't want.
I really wouldn't take on this task without seriously reconsidering the vendor
decision (did they look at open source as well as enterprise?), or changing
what you want to "an intelligent data-driven web site", rather than a "portal".
They're not easier to build, and the admin costs are tremendous for home-grown
portals.
Another option, dunno if you thought of it, is to find a "portal
implementation" company, some of whom build from scratch when needed. I know
of one in the DC/Carolina area if you'd like a reference (they're heavy UCD and
pretty smart folks).
As for web references on portals, try Wikipedia ("enterprise portals"),
Forrester, KMWorld, IntranetsToday or CMSWatch, to name a few.
Best of luck =]
- Bryan
http://www.bryanminihan.com
---- Mike Scarpiello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In a nutshell, we are a restaurant type web site - think Zagat or Metromix,
> and want our 8000+ merchants to be able to edit information about their
> restaurants themselves via a portal. The IT team has rejected out of the
> box software and is interested in creating an in house solution.
>
> Does that help?
>
> Thanks.
>
> On 10/10/07, Joseph Selbie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > "I've just been tasked with designing a customer portal (i.e. extranet)
> > from
> > scratch. Has anyone done anything like this before, or can anyone point
> > me
> > toward some reference materials?"
> >
> > What industry? Customers have a wide variety of needs :).
> >
> > Joseph Selbie
> > Founder, CEO Tristream
> > Web Application Development
> > http://www.tristream.com
> >
> >
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