Key Differences Between Website and Portal

Most of the people who embark on their web journey are often confused about the difference between a website and a portal. When inquired about both of them, the people with layman knowledge on this particular subject have limited to no knowledge, and most of them miss the point entirely. Lack of this knowledge results in people often hiring website development services for web portal development, and in case of website development, they hire web portal development services.

In order to know the difference between a website and a portal, people should first know the concept of both. So, before we start discussing the difference between a website and a portal, let’s look at websites and portals on their development process, functionality, popular frameworks used to create them along with their individual benefits.

What is a Website?

A website is actually a collection of various related web pages which include multimedia content, often identified with a certain common domain name and published on a web server, at least. It can also be defined as an interlinked collection of a variety of web pages which are grouped in different ways and together they are termed as a website.

Functions of a Website

1. A website provides you with the means to convey to your clients about your products and services and also assist you in engaging with them in a rather long interaction in order to convince them to choose your business.

 2. A website assists in resolving any confusion or queries which are asked by new clients that can further become potent client base. Hence, including these questions, especially Frequently Asked Questions or FAQs along with their answers on your website assist in attracting better clients while reducing your’s as well as clients’ time. If a business is creating a website of its own, then custom website development requires the business to provide FAQs regarding itself to the website development company.

 3. The Contact US page of the website is actually a gateway of better clientele, and it actually allows the clients to easily investigate details regarding different ways to get in touch with you such as email address, phone number, office address etc. 

 4. One of the most salient advantages of a website is that it builds the credibility of a business. A website with lots of professional edges along with aesthetically beautiful themes, functions etc. showcase that your products, services along with policies, customer support, etc. are of high quality. 

 5. With the assistance of a website along with Search Engine Optimization or SEP, you can easily increase the visibility of your business on the web and create a great deal of client awareness all over the world.

 6. When it comes to website development, fullstack development services should follow the following steps.

a. Gathering Information

b. Brainstorming

c. Planning

d. Content Writing

e. Coding

f. Testing and Review

g. Launch

 7. In recent years we have witnessed the sudden emergence and eventual downfall of a lot of web development languages as well as frameworks. However, some of them have survived and now became the key languages and frameworks for website development. Some of them are Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, CSS etc.

There are few popular frameworks which make the development of various types of websites quite easy. They are Django, Symfony, Ruby on Rails, Bootstrap, Laravel, Zend, CakePHP etc.

What is a Portal?

A web portal is essentially a specifically designed website which offers information gathered from different sources like emails, search engines, online forums etc. on a single platform, in quite a uniform way. It is actually a customized and personalized library which assists in navigation as well as personalization of notifications which offer well-integrated information from various sources with different advanced features like collaboration, task management, business intelligence etc.

 Functions of a Portal

 1. Portal development assists you in improving the overall capability of all of the web pages, which help in delivering quality information. Most of the portal developed by web portal development services are often a new toolset which makes the overall implementation of information much better. It also behaves in quite a different communication approach.

2. When implemented efficiently, portal design services assist you in interacting with customers as well as clients in a much better way. They help you in making the web pages highly interactive as well as target better to the audience. 

3. Web portal development, as well as designing, is as complex as custom website development, due to the inherent difficulty to render its functionality. The entire complex process of web portal development consists of similar steps as custom web development. However, the difference lies in its functionality, features, coding, testing and finally, integration. 

 Key Differences Between a Website and a Portal

Websites and portals can easily be differentiated in various aspects. 

 1. Websites are actually majorly focused on driving more volume of traffic, whereas portals are meant for limiting the traffic.

 2. Websites are open to being actually visited by any person, whereas a portal requires login credentials for users to login. Fullstack development services should introduce the login feature in portal development.

3. On the basis of usage, a portal creates and attracts a certain type of audience experience along with control of users’ functionality on the page, as well as multiple source integrations in order to offer uniform information. It should also offer user management and different permitting features. However, in the case of a website, no such personalization is needed.

4. To reiterate the basic definition, a website is actually a location on the internet which is publicly accessible through a unique web address or URL. However, a portal is a private location on the web, which is accessible through a unique URL as well as a unique username and password.

5. When it comes down to access to content, in case of a website, anyone can visit and see the entire content of the website. However, in the case of a portal, only the members of the portal are allowed to access the contents of the web portal.

6. Considering the content type, the content doesn’t change by different persons in case of a website. However, in a portal, dynamic content changes much more frequently.

Conclusion

So, when it comes to the differentiation between websites and portals, it can be quite a tedious task. However, there are certain functions that distinguish one from the other. 

The above-mentioned distinctions can help you easily differentiate both of them. When it comes down to hiring any of the website development services or web portal development services, check whether they are well-versed with the distinction between websites and web portals.