To understand distributed web portals, we must first understand web portals. A web portal is an access point to information under a unified theme, which is to say a similar look and feel. Yahoo and Google are examples of web portals. But, really, with such a broad definition, a better question might be: What isn't a web portal?
It's true. We often think of web portals as sites like search engines, but many websites fall under the web portal umbrella. So, how do you tell a web portal from a regular run-of-the-mill website? The basic rule of thumb is that a web portal's main purpose is to serve up information. A restaurant guide, for example, is a web portal. Its purpose is to inform the user about restaurants.
What are Distributed Web Portals?
In many ways, a distributed web portal could be called a portal to portals. It acts as an aggregator of information from multiple portals, which is a fancy way of saying it grabs all the information and plops it in one place.
Let's use our restaurant guide example. There might be a website that serves as a restaurant guide to New York City, and another website catering to San Francisco, and another for Denver, etc.
These individual guides are great, but what if someone travels a lot? It sure would be handy to put them all together. And that's what a distributed web portal does. It acts as a central point where a user can go to get information from multiple portals. So, instead of having to track down the restaurant guide for a specific city, our traveler can just go to a Restaurants Around the World website.
