About Portals


Portals are, as the term suggests, a gateway... a gateway to the content that you publish there. This much might be said of everything on the Internet, but there are two key features of Portals that distinguish them from custom websites and on-line databases: 'look & feel' and 'access control'.

Look & Feel

The pages of portals have a consistent presentation, style and format. All the pages have the same 'look & feel', as if they came from the same source. In reality, however, the content has been generated by multiple authors with different levels of technical expertise and using different software tools.

Consistency in SCP portals is enforced by the design template that the Account Owner or Administrator has chosen. The template determines the layout, colours and fonts of each portal page. Using templates eliminates the need to sub-edit colleagues' work so that it looks like yours. You will still need to check that your editorial standards are being upheld, but you will not need to worry about how it is going to look on the screen. And if you think that your portal needs a make-over and re-launch, templates can be changed at any time without any loss of data.

Access Control

The other key feature of portals is the way that they manage access to the content. Portals present the user with only the pages that they have be granted access to see. Portal security manages access at all levels: it determines whether you can enter (log-in) the portal at all, and how far you explore its contents.

The SCP manages Access through Member Groups. Groups are associated with content, and Guests (or Members) are associated with Groups. If you belong to the group that been given access to a page, you can see that page. If not, you can't. Maintaining access groups is easier than managing individual Members. Changing permission to pages and attachments takes a few clicks. This is particularly useful if you clone your portal for a new audience and need to disassociate the old audience from the new portal.

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CategorySCPPortals