web portals

Internet starting pages

Web portals are websites that serve as gateways to a broad range of content and services—news, email, search, weather, stock quotes—all aggregated in one place.

Yahoo and AOL were quintessential web portals of the early internet era, designed to be users' starting point for browsing.

The portal model has largely given way to specialized sites and apps, though enterprise portals still aggregate internal company resources for employees.

Opposites
scope and aggregation

web portalsmicrosites

Small standalone web pages

microsite · landing pages · landing page

centralization vs. distribution

web portalspeer-to-peer networks

Decentralized file-sharing architecture

Family

web, entrance, doorway, portal

Familiarity
Top 500,000
Profile
Known to kids · Used worldwide · Everyday, not technical · Rated G