Website, blog and portal

Website: - The form "website" has become the most common spelling, but "Web site"
(capitalised) and "web site" are also widely used, though declining. Some academia, some
large book publishers, and some dictionaries still use "Web site", reflecting the origin of the
term in the proper name World Wide Web. There has also been similar debate regarding
related terms such as web page, web server, and webcam.
A website, also written as web site, or simply site, is a set of related web pages
1
typically
served from a single web domain
2
. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible
via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address
known as a Uniform resource locator. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute
the World Wide Web.
A webpage is a document, typically written in plain text interspersed with formatting
instructions of Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML,XHTML). A webpage may incorporate
elements from other websites with suitable mark-up anchors.
Webpages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which
may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy
for the user of the webpage content. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the
page content according to its HTML mark-up instructions onto a display terminal.
The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a simple Uniform Resource Locator
(URL) called the web address. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy,
although hyperlinking between them conveys the reader's perceived site structure and guides
the reader's navigation of the site which generally includes a home page with most of the
links to the site's web content, and a supplementary about, contact and link page.
Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of
subscription websites include many business sites, parts of news websites, academic
journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email,
social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, and websites
providing various other services (e.g., websites offering storing and/or sharing of images,
files and so forth).

1
A web page is a web document that is suitable for the World Wide Web and the web browser.
2
domain name that specifies its exact location in the tree hierarchy of the Domain Name
System (DNS).
Static website and Dynamic website: -
Static Website: - A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the format
that is sent to a client web browser. It is primarily coded in Hypertext Mark-up
Language (HTML);Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to control appearance beyond
basic HTML. Images are commonly used to effect the desired appearance and as part of the
main content. Audio or video might also be considered "static" content if it plays
automatically or is generally non-interactive.
This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors. Similar to handing
out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide
consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner
may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other
content and may require basic website design skills and software. Simple forms or marketing
examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are
often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This
may include information about a company and its products and services through text, photos,
animations, audio/video, and navigation menus.
Static web sites can be edited using four broad categories of software:
Text editors, such as Notepad or Text Edit, where content and HTML markup are
manipulated directly within the editor program
WYSIWYG offline editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe
Dreamweaver (previously Macromedia Dreamweaver), with which the site is edited
using a GUI and the final HTML mark-up is generated automatically by the editor
software
WYSIWYG online editors which create media rich online presentation like web pages,
widgets, intro, blogs, and other documents.
Template-based editors, such as Rapid Weaver and iWeb, which allow users to quickly
create and upload web pages to a web server without detailed HTML knowledge, as they
pick a suitable template from a palette and add pictures and text to it in a desktop
publishing fashion without direct manipulation of HTML code
Static websites may still use server side includes (SSI) as an editing convenience, such as
sharing a common menu bar across many pages. As the site's behaviour to the readeris still
static, this is not considered a dynamic site.


Dynamic website: - A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently
and automatically. Server-side dynamic pages are generated "on the fly" by computer code
that produces the HTML and CSS. There are a wide range of software systems, such
as CGI, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP), Active Server
Pages and ColdFusion (CFML) that are available to generate dynamic web systems and
dynamic sites. Various web application frameworks and web template systems are available
for general-use programming languages like PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby, to make it faster
and easier to create complex dynamic web sites.
A site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation,
or provide information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user.
For example, when the front page of a news site is requested, the code running on the web
server might combine stored HTML fragments with news stores retrieved from a database or
another web site via RSS to produce a page that includes the latest information. Dynamic
sites can be interactive by using HTML forms, storing and reading back browser cookies, or
by creating a series of pages that reflect the previous history of clicks. Another example of
dynamic content is when a retail website with a database of media products allows a user to
input a search request, e.g. for the keyword Beatles. In response, the content of the web page
will spontaneously change the way it looked before, and will then display a list of Beatles
products like CDs, DVDs and books.
Dynamic HTML uses JavaScript code to instruct the web browser how to interactively
modify the page contents.
One way to simulate a certain type of dynamic web site while avoiding the performance loss
of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis, is to periodically
automatically regenerate a large series of static pages.

Types of website:-
Websites can be divided into two broad categories - static and interactive. Interactive
sites are part of the Web 2.0 community of sites, and allow for interactivity between the site
owner and site visitors. Static sites serve or capture information but do not allow engagement
with the audience directly.
Some web sites are informational or produced by enthusiasts or for personal use or
entertainment. Many web sites do aim to make money, using one or more business models,
including:
Posting interesting content and selling contextual advertising either through direct sales
or through an advertising network.
E-commerce - products or services are purchased directly through the web site
Advertise products or services available at a brick and mortar business
Freemium - basic content is available for free but premium content is paid
Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business
website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such
as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For
example, a porn site is a specific type of e-commerce site or business site (that is, it is trying
to sell memberships for access to its site) or have social networking capabilities. A fan
site may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity.
Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the
website). Very large websites, such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ
many servers and load balancing equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to
distribute visitor loads over multiple computers at multiple locations. As of early 2011,
Facebook utilized 9 data centres with approximately 63,000 servers.
In February 2009, Net craft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth
since 1995, reported that there were 215,675,903 websites with domain names and content on
them in 2009, compared to just 19,732 websites in August 1995.

Blog: - A blog (a truncation of the expression web log) is a discussion or informational site
published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically
displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until 2009 blogs
were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered
a single subject. More recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts
written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other
media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups and similar institutions account for
an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems
helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into societal news teams. Blog can also be used
as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of web
publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users. (Previously, a
knowledge of such technologies as HTML and FTP had been required to publish content on
the Web.)
A majority are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other
via GUI widgets on the blogs, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other
static websites. In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social networking service.
Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on their blogs, but also build social
relations with their readers and other bloggers. There are high-readership blogs which do not
allow comments, such as Daring Fireball.
Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject; others function as more
personal online diaries; others function more as online brand advertising of a particular
individual or company. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web
pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an
interactive format is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs. Most blogs
are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blogs), photographs (photo blogs),
videos (video blogs or "vlogs"), music (MP3 blogs), and audio (podcasts). Microblogging is
another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. In education, blogs can be used as
instructional resources. These blogs are referred to as edu blogs.
On 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. On 20 February
2014, there were around 172 million Tumblr and 75.8 million WordPress blogs in existence
worldwide. According to critics and other bloggers, Blogger is the most popular blogging
service used today, however Blogger does not offer public statistics. Technorati has 1.3
million blogs as of February 22, 2014.
Types: - There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the type of content,
but also in the way that content is delivered or written.
Personal blogs: - The personal blog is an ongoing diary or commentary written by an
individual.
Microblogging: - Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content
which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other mediaon the Internet.
Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to
many and has captured the public imagination. Friends use it to keep in touch, business
associates use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and celebrities and
politicians (or their publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour
schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables sophisticated updates and
interaction with other applications, and the resulting profusion of functionality is helping to
define new possibilities for this type of communication. Examples of these
include Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and by far the largest WeiBo.
Corporate and organizational blogs: - A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be
for business purposes. Blogs used internally to enhance the communication and culture in
a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are
called corporate blogs. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group
blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of
club and member activities.
By genre: - Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, health
blogs, travel blogs (also known as travel blogs), gardening blogs, house blogs, fashion
blogs,project blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs
and legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs) or dreamlogs. How To/Tutorial blogs are
becoming increasing popular. Two common types of genre blogs are art blogs and music
blogs. A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family is not uncommonly
called a mom blog and one made popular is by Erica Diamond who created
Womenonthefence.com which is syndicated to over two million readers monthly. While not a
legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a Splog.
By media type: - A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called
a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising
photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are
called tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast
or typecast blogs; see typecasting (blogging).
A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol is known as a Phlog.
By device: - Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog
written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog. One early
blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life
combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and
EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video
together with text was referred to as sousveillance. Such journals have been used as evidence
in legal matters.
Reverse blog: -A Reverse Blog is composed by its users rather than a single blogger. This
system has the characteristics of a blog, and the writing of several authors. These can be
written by several contributing authors on a topic, or opened up for anyone to write. There is
typically some limit to the number of entries to keep it from operating like a Web Forum.

Personal safety: - One consequence of blogging is the possibility of attacks or threats against
the blogger, sometimes without apparent reason. Kathy Sierra, author of the innocuous blog
"Creating Passionate Users", was the target of such vicious threats and misogynistic insults
that she cancelled her keynote speech at a technology conference in San Diego, fearing for
her safety. While a blogger's anonymity is often tenuous, Internet trolls who would attack a
blogger with threats or insults can be emboldened by anonymity. Sierra and supporters
initiated an online discussion aimed at countering abusive online behaviour and developed
a blogger's code of conduct.
Web Portal: - A web portal is most often one specially-designed Web page which brings
information together from diverse sources in a uniform way. Usually, each information
source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information (a portlet); often, the
user can configure which ones to display. Variants of portals
include mashups and intranet"dashboards" for executives and managers. The extent to which
content is displayed in a "uniform way" may depend on the intended user and the intended
purpose, as well as the diversity of the content. Very often design emphasis is on a certain
"metaphor" for configuring and customizing the presentation of the content and the chosen
implementation framework and/or code libraries. In addition, the role of the user in an
organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the
portal configuration.
A portal may use a search engine API to permit users to search intranet content as opposed to
extranet content by restricting which domains may be searched. Apart from this
common search engines feature, web portals may offer other services such as e-mail, news,
stock quotes, information from databases and even entertainment content. Portals provide a
way for enterprises and organizations to provide a consistent look and feel with access
control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have
been different web entities at various URLs. The features available may be restricted by
whether access is by an authorized and authenticated user (employee,member) or an
anonymous site visitor.
Examples of early public web portals
were AOL, Excite, Netvibes, iGoogle, MSN, Naver, Lycos, India times, Rediff, and Yahoo!.
See for example, the "My Yahoo!" feature of Yahoo! which may have inspired such features
as the later Google "iGoogle" (discontinued as of November 1, 2013.) The configurable side-
panels of, for example, the modern Opera browser and the option of "Speed Dial" pages by
most browsers continue to reflect the earlier "portal" metaphor.
Classification: - Web portals are sometimes classified as horizontal or vertical. A horizontal
portal is used as a platform to several companies in the same economic sector or to the same
type of manufacturers or distributors. A vertical portal (also known as a "vortal") is a
specialized entry point to a specific market or industry niche, subject area, or interest. Some
vertical portals are known as "vertical information portals" (VIPs). VIPs provide news,
editorial content, digital publications, and e-commerce capabilities. In contrast to traditional
vertical portals, VIPs also provide dynamic multimedia applications including social
networking, video posting, and blogging.
Types of Web Portals: -
Personal portals
A personal portal is a web page at a web site on the World Wide Web or a local HTML home
page including JavaScript and perhaps running in a modified web browser. A personal portal
typically provides personalized capabilities to its visitors or its local user, providing a
pathway to other content. It may be designed to use distributed applications, different
numbers and types of middleware and hardware to provide services from a number of
different sources and may run on a non-standard local web server. In addition, business
portals can be designed for sharing and collaboration in workplaces. A further business-
driven requirement of portals is that the content be presented on multiple platforms such
as personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and cell phones/mobile
phone/mobile phones. Information, news, and updates are examples of content that would be
delivered through such a portal. Personal portals can be related to any specific topic such as
providing friend information on a social network or providing links to outside content that
may help others beyond your reach of services. Portals are not limited to simply providing
links. Outside of business intracet user, very often simpler portals become replaced with
richer mashup designs. Within enterprises, early portals were often replaced by much more
powerful "dashboard" designs. Some also have relied on newer protocols such as some
version of RSS aggregation and may or may not involve some degree of web harvesting.
Government web portals
At the end of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, many governments had already committed to
creating portal sites for their citizens. These included primary portals to the governments as
well as portals developed for specific audiences. Examples of government web portals
include:
australia.gov.au for Australia.
USA.gov for the United States (in English) & GobiernoUSA.gov (in Spanish).
www.gov.lk for Sri Lanka.
Disability.gov for citizens with disabilities in the United States.
Europa (web portal) links to all EU agencies and institutions in addition to press releases
and audio visual content from press conferences.
gov.uk for citizens & businesslink.gov.uk for businesses in the United Kingdom.
Health-EU portal gathers all relevant health topics from across Europe.
india.gov.in for India.
National Resource Directory links to resources for United States Service Members,
Veterans and their families.
newzealand.govt.nz for New Zealand.
Saudi.gov.sa for Saudi Arabia.
Cultural portals
Cultural portal aggregate digitised cultural collections of galleries, libraries, archives and
museums. This type of portals provides a point of access to invisible web cultural content that
may not be indexed by standard search engines. Digitised collections can include books,
artworks, photography, journals, newspapers, music, sound recordings, film, maps, diaries
and letters, and archived websites as well as the descriptive metadata associated with each
type of cultural work. These portals are usually based around a specific national or regional
groupings of institutions. Examples of cultural portals include:
DigitalNZ A cultural portal led by the National Library of New Zealand focused on
New Zealand digital content.
Europeana A cultural portal for the European Union based in the National Library of
the Netherlands and overseen by the Europeana Foundation.
Trove A cultural portal led by the National Library of Australia focused on Australian
content.
In development - Digital Public Library of America
Corporate web portals
Corporate intranets became common during the 1990s. As intranets grew in size and
complexity, webmasters were faced with increasing content and user management challenges.
A consolidated view of company information was judged insufficient; users wanted
personalization and customization. Webmasters, if skilled enough, were able to offer some
capabilities, but for the most part ended up driving users away from using the intranet.
Many companies began to offer tools to help webmasters manage their data, applications and
information more easily, and through personalized views. Portal solutions can also include
workflow management, collaboration between work groups, and policy-managed content
publication. Most can allow internal and external access to specific corporate information
using secure authentication or single sign-on.
JSR168 Standards emerged around 2001. Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 standards
allow the interoperability of portlets across different portal platforms. These standards allow
portal developers, administrators and consumers to integrate standards-based portals and
portlets across a variety of vendor solutions.
The concept of content aggregation seems to still gain momentum and portal solution will
likely continue to evolve significantly over the next few years. The Gartner Group predicts
generation 8 portals to expand on the Business Mashups concept of delivering a variety of
information, tools, applications and access points through a single mechanism.
With the increase in user generated content, disparate data silos, and file formats, information
architects and taxonomist will be required to allow users the ability to tag (classify) the data.
This will ultimately cause a ripple effect where users will also be generating ad hoc
navigation and information flows.
Corporate Portals also offer customers & employees self-service opportunities.
Stock portals
Also known as stock-share portals, stock market portals or stock exchange portals are Web-
based applications that facilitates the process of informing the share-holders with substantial
online data such as the latest price, ask/bids, the latest News, reports and announcements.
Some stock portals use online gateways through a central depository system (CDS) for the
visitors (ram) to buy or sell their shares or manage their portfolio.
Search portals
Search portals aggregate results from several search engines into one page.
Tender portals
A tender portal is a gateway for government suppliers to bid on providing goods and services.
Tender portals allow users to search, modify, submit, review and archive data in order to
provide a complete online tendering process.
Using online tendering, bidders can do any of the following:
Receive notification of the tenders.
Receive tender documents online.
Fill out the forms online.
Submit proposals and documents.
Submit bids online.
Hosted web portals
Hosted web portals gained popularity and a number of companies began offering them as a
hosted service. The hosted portal market fundamentally changed the composition of portals.
In many ways they served simply as a tool for publishing information instead of the loftier
goals of integrating legacy applications or presenting correlated data from distributed
databases. The early hosted portal companies such as Hyperoffice.com or the now defunct
InternetPortal.com focused on collaboration and scheduling in addition to the distribution of
corporate data. As hosted web portals have risen in popularity their feature set has grown to
include hosted databases, document management, email, discussion forums and more. Hosted
portals automatically personalize the content generated from their modules to provide a
personalized experience to their users. In this regard they have remained true to the original
goals of the earlier corporate web portals. Emerging new classes of internet portals called
Cloud Portals are showcasing the power of API (Application Programming Interface) rich
software systems leveraging SOA (service oriented architecture, web services, and custom
data exchange) to accommodate machine to machine interaction creating a more fluid user
experience for connecting users spanning multiple domains during a given "session". Leading
cloud portals like Nubifer Cloud Portal showcase what is possible using Enterprise Mashup
and Web Service integration approaches to building cloud portals.
Domain-specific portals
A number of portals have come about which are specific to the particular domain, offering
access to related companies and services; a prime example of this trend would be the growth
in property portals that give access to services such as estate agents, removal firm,
and solicitors that offer conveyancing. Along the same lines, industry-specific news and
information portals have appeared, such as the clinical trials-specific portal.

Overview: - The main concept is to present the user with a single web page that brings
together or aggregates content from a number of other systems or servers. The application
server or architecture performs most of the crucial functions of the application. This
application server is in turn connected to database servers, and may be part of a clustered
server environment. High-capacity portal configurations may include load balancing
strategies.
For portals that present application functionality to the user, the portal server is in reality the
front piece of a server configuration that includes some connectivity to the application server.
For early web browsers permitting HTML frameset and iFrame elements, diverse information
could be presented without violating the browser same-source security policy (relied upon to
prevent a variety of cross-site security breaches.) More recent client-side technologies rely on
JavaScript frameworks and libraries that rely on more recent web functionality such as
WebSockets and async callbacks using XMLHttpRequests.

In such a design, security and concurrent user capacity can be important issues, and security
designers need to ensure that only authenticated and authorized users can generate requests to
the application server. If the security design and administration does not ensure adequate
authentication and authorization, then the portal may inadvertently present vulnerabilities to
various types of attacks.