What is Specialised/Niche Portals

In general terms, a portal can be seen as “a door, gate or entrance” (Macquarie Library, 1981), and in its simplest form the word just means a gateway; however, it is often a gateway to somewhere other than just to the next room or street. The Oxford Reference Dictionary defines a portal as “a doorway or gate etc, especially a large and elaborate one” (Pearsall & Trumble, 1996). In the context of this article, a Web portal is considered to be a special Internet (or intranet) site designed to act as a gateway to give access to other specific sites. A Web portal can be said to aggregate information from multiple sources and make this information available to various users (Tatnall, 2005c). It consists of a Web site that can be used to find and gain access to other sites, but also to provide the services of a guide that can help to protect the user from the chaos of the Internet and direct him or her toward a specific goal. More generally, however, a portal should be seen as providing a gateway not just to sites on the Web, but to all network-accessible resources, whether involving intranets, extranets, or the Internet. In other words, a portal offers centralised access to all relevant content and applications.