Web Portal Development

Portal development life cycle is majorly divided into four stages.

• Architecture
• Development
• Staging
• Production

Stage 1: Architecture

Architecture stage includes designing the actual look and feel of web portal. Here all the responsibilities will be on the shoulders of our web designer and web developer.  

Here are certain elements that absolutely need to include while designing web portal:

• Simple navigation to allow users search for their required information easily and navigate through portal with ease.
• Information about the business ( “About us” section). A brief ‘About us’ page is a must to build trust among users in order to inform them about your business and its services.
• Proper contact information page can help your customer contact you and get in touch whenever needed.
• Attractive call to actions interest your reader and help you turn customers into leads.
• Search tool to help reader directly search for what they are looking for.
• Utilising the footer with availing the user with the information.
• Image size should be appropriate and should not hamper the portal speed.
• Similar web fonts throughout the entire portal.

The most important thing is to make a prototype before the actual site. This will help you recognize certain errors that could have escaped eye before going live.

Stage 2: Development

A web portal consists of multiple pages dedicated to different aspects of your business and the development stage is devoted to take care of that. In this stage the test data is utilised to design the navigation model of the portal and other important aspects such as page template, display template, and the content model.

Here the developer has to keep few things in mind:

• Portal load time doesn’t exceed the average minimum time, which is 3 seconds
• Navigation has to be easy
• The web forms are working properly
• User interface (UI & UX) has to be proper and according to user requirements. It is the on-page graphics of the website
  

• Providing all the required information related to the search with catalogue, images and videos.

This stage ensures that the audience who visit the portal get the required information and convert into a lead. They know that customers are real busy and make sure things go swiftly for them.

Stage 3: Staging

Staging Part 1: Testing

In staging, a complete clone of a live environment is created to stress test your web portal. When your website is all set for the final deployment, test it’s functionality first and look for some final bugs. You should test your web portal  for:

• complete functionality
• compatibility issues with every platform including mobiles
• Proper optimization to be viewed properly in each browser versions
• Mobile responsibility
• Proper working of the content management system (CMS )

The web portal must be tested by Integration testing, Stress testing, Scalability testing, load testing, resolution testing, cross-browser compatibility testing, user acceptance testing, and broader internal reviews.

Testing is done to ensure your web portal works properly before you launch it to your audience. Check if your website is according to current standards for website design and development.

Staging Part 2: Deploying the Portal

After successfully testing your portal from head to toe and fixing the found bugs, if any, it’s time for the final deployment.

Stage 4: Production

Production is the live environment of the web portal and now it is the responsibility of the administrator to manage the portal using weblogic portal administration console. In this stage the portal is live to audience and hence managed by the site administrator who performs tasks like making incremental updates to metadata, managing the content on the portal, and web assets using automated scripts.

Post portal development

After the portal is live to audience and it is working properly, it is further managed by the administrator who has to repeat the back and forth process of portal development cycle. You can make use of specific portal development tools to help manage WebLogic portal applications and resources

The two management tools that can be used are:

Library Administrator

Library administrator helps the admin manage following things:

• Shells
• Themes
• Menus
• Books
• Pages
• Layouts
• Look & Feel
• Portlets
• Portlet Categories
• Portlet Producers

Portal Administrator

Portal administrators helps assemble portals and entitle parts of the portal to end users and other administrators.

So, there you go! You can create a web portal for just about anything. You can get one made to help streamline your business processes or to show personalised content to your users or anything your heart desires. Just tell what you need to your developers and they will take care of the rest.