Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with portal

IBM Websphere Portal vs Microsoft SharePoint?

Anonymous — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:31:36 -0800

IBM Websphere Portal vs Microsoft SharePoint: which is less loathsome? The organization for which I work (think: mid-size governmental agency, several thousand employees) got hoodwinked into buying IBM Websphere Portal, just before I started working for them. I say 'hoodwinked' because, whatever strengths or shortcomings Portal might have in general, it is a terrible fit for our needs. We use portal as our intranet platform, users log in and have personalized access on to a couple of applications, and maybe news or other stuff related to their department. I am one of three developer/producers for our intranet and internet sites. We paid consultants a zillion dollars to install Portal, and another zillion form time to time when it breaks.

Ok, fine, I'll admit it. I hate Websphere Portal. It can do powerful things but it is the most obfuscated, complicated, expensive, counter-intuitive, unpredictable, instable, inflexible, bloated, ugly, PIG of an application I have ever had the displeasure of crossing paths with. Its very existence offends me as an employee and as a taxpayer - it's that bad.

Anyway, now somebody somewhere well above me is in the process of being hoodwinked into buying SharePoint, a product I don't know much about. But, since I have a fair amount of experience coding VB, and administering IIS, and it seems like you can actually write asp/html type code and have it work without TOOOOOO much juryrigging, SharePoint sounds like a magical land of unicorns and rainbows compared to Websphere Portal.

Surprisingly, we have been asked whether we think SharePoint is a good idea.

So, at long last, the question: am I going to hate SharePoint as much as I hate WebSphere Portal? More? Should I take my retirement 20 years early and become a painter of houses?

Recommend a client portal solution to add to our website?

reddot — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:25:54 -0800

I'd like to add a client portal to an existing website. Any ideas? My employer currently has a website. We'd like to add a customer portal, where the client can download documents pertaining to their project and view videos that we'd produce for them. There's no need for any kind of interaction component and we'd really like to add this feature to our website. Any ideas?

I saw this post from 2007, which basically ended up recommending Basecamp.

I'm going to evaluate Basecamp, but we'd really like something that could be added to our website. I think it might actually be overkill for what we need.

One option, which I am also investigating is that we have a Sharepoint which can be exposed to the internet. I don't have much Sharepoint experience (and that which I do have indicates that it's pretty clunky and tough to customize), but perhaps it could be used for this purpose?

Thanks.

"I'm making a note here: huge success."

Nelsormensch — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:33:04 -0800

What video games feature in-game songs (with lyrics) related to the game itself? I'm thinking Portal's "Still Alive," not Rock Band. I'm looking for games that have songs with a musical (i.e. stage musical) quality. Johnathan Coulton's "Still Alive" during the credits for Portal or MC Frontalot's "Final Boss" at the end of Rainslick Ep. 1 are exactly what I'm looking for.

Non-credits songs are fine too. Conker's Bad Fur Day featured a mini-opera from a titanic mound of crap (NSFW) and Curse of Monkey Island has the barber-y pirates singing. I'm perfectly happy with examples like this as well. These four are all I can think of, but I'm sure there have to be at least a few more.

What I'm not looking for are songs without lyrics or real world songs in games, so no Guitar Hero or Amplitude. Thanks hivemind!

What web portal software for PDF/HTML search?

RecalcitrantYouth — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:35:27 -0800

I’m trying to build a simple web portal to share PDF and HTML documentation with our customers, and allow them to search the documentation. I figured this would be many FOSS tools available to do this, but I keep running into roadblocks… My requirements are fairly simple (at least I think they are):
1. Indexing and search of PDF and HTML files (ideally with Lucene or another search engine with similar capabilities)
2. Indexing and search of files not directly linked from portal pages (e.g. HTML sub-pages within Doxygen docs)
3. Access control so customers can only see and search content they‘re entitled to
4. Easy file upload would be nice

I’ve looked at a bunch of different Content Management Systems and Portals (Drupal, Joomla, Jahia, Liferay, Hippo, Magnolia and others), all of which have many other nice features, but none so far have been able to do simple PDF/HTML search with access control.

From the feature list on cmsmatrix.org, most CMSs seem focused on other areas (blogging, news, portlets), so I'm not sure anymore that a CMS is even what I'm looking for.

Any recommendations? Am I missing something obvious here? Should I be looking for something other than a CMS?

He already has the twitch reflexes of a five year old

QuantumMeruit — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 13:42:57 -0800

Are there any FPS-type games other than the early levels of Portal which would be appropriate for my 5-year old? My 5-year old saw my wife and I playing Portal, the puzzle-type FPS game made by Vault (who put out the Half Life series of games). On a lark, we let him loose on the first few levels, and he really liked them. By level 10 or so, the puzzles get too abstract for him and he gets frustrated, though.

We don't want to introduce him to military-type shooters (although we're fine with cartoon violence, really). The headcrabs and zombies in HL2 would definitely give him nightmares.

Are there any age-appropriate games that are sort of like the first few levels of Portal?

Which Orange Box to Buy for a PS3/Mac User

Doctor Suarez — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:54:57 -0800

Which Way to Go on Valve's Orange Box: the PS3, or Apple Boot Camp. A Two-Part Question. I have both a new, powerful Mac and a PS3. I'm salivating over Valve's Orange Box (containing all Half Life 2 content, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.)

Now the trick is, in which format would I purchase the game?

The PS3 version would cost around $60, and while I hear it's a serviceable port, it's supposedly not the best.

The PC version would be $35, but I'd have to finally get a copy of Windows that can recognize all four cores on my Mac Pro. So it'll actually be MORE expensive, but I imagine a better overall experience. Also, this would not be the only use I'll ever have for Boot Camp, just the impetus to start.

So, the main question: Which way would you recommend I go?

Follow up: If Boot Camp, what's the best OS to get for a 4-core system, assuming gaming is the only use.

HDTV + Xbox 360 quality (antialiasing?)

korpios — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:55:46 -0800

I recently purchased an HDTV (Vizio VX37L 37" LCD; 768p) and an Xbox 360 (Elite); am I getting the image quality I should be getting? Specifically, there seems to be far less antialiasing going on than I'd expect; "jaggies" are obvious from across the room. The 360 is connected to the TV via HDMI, and the 360 is outputting 720p. I have some shots on Flickr of my screen that illustrate what I'm talking about (mostly from Portal / The Orange Box):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/korpios/1805865011/

That photo, and previous ones, show quite jagged / "stair step" lines. If that's just how that particular game goes (or the system in general), I can suck it up and live with it; I'd certainly like to know if I have a bum unit before my exchange deadline runs out on Sunday, though (yay Gamestop! ... meh).

Community ASP Software?

frufry — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:40:30 -0800

I'm looking for a community/portal service that isn't rediculously expensive. Anyone know of such a thing? I feel like I have a list of "requirements" that are leaving me without a solution.

I need basic community things like content/file management, forums, user management, but I want it in the form of an ASP, so I don't have to download and install it, so ASPDotNuke, Drupal, etc are out.

Talisma is pretty close to what I'm looking for, but it's crazy-expensive, and overkill in so many ways. Anything that's really a CRM system isn't going to be the right thing anyway.

Basically, what I'm looking for is the lovechild of Talisma and 37Signals. Simple, easy-to-use, ASP software for community functions; at a reasonable price.

Has anyone seen anything like this out there?

Portal Systems

juiceCake — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:57:23 -0800

Got a request from a client. They want to create a portal that gets information from various news organizations on a specific subject. I'm looking for information on portal software that is compatible with news feeds and news feed information in general. They will want to pull full articles and perhaps other content from organizations (having obviously made arrangements) and categorize the information appropriately. Is it just a CMS with XML feeds basically? I've worked with CMSs before and understand many of the fundamentals of site development but have no experience pulling data in a portal fashion from other organizations.

What's that site like word.com but with more drugs and sex (and none of those cool daily animations)?

littlegreenlights — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 08:43:40 -0800

What's that site with web-fomat short stories, usually at least somewhat autobiographical, and accompanied by illustrations--in the vein of the old word.com Work content? It's been a while since I've checked it for new content and I just can't seem to think of the domain name, but I'm sure someone here will know the site I'm talking about.

Story categories include sex, work, and drugs. Its appearance is light on dark, with, I believe, purple navigation icons for each category--i.e. a little spilling anthropomorphic coffee cup for the 'work' category.

The story I remember most was by a Jewish guy who, as a child, received an age-inappropriate gift of a teddy bear from his overprotective but well-intentioned father and responded by secretly stabbing it furiously with a kitchen knife or scissors.

It seems like the domain name was a synonym for 'grind' or 'grist' but I'm just not hitting the right word, and my searches are interesting but not fruitful. Am I close? Feels like it's right on the tip of my brain.

If anyone wants to make this more useful for myself and others, feel free to recommend similar fictionalized slice of life sites such as this one.

I used to love reading the ones on word.com . . . I think the first one I ever read was about a woman and her boyfriend who experimented with watersports for a while. Eventually they broke up and she tossed their mattress. Each time you clicked to go to the next page, another mattress was added atop a little illustrated stack of mattresses to the right of the story text. Heh.

where one could find future speaking enagaments in one place?

Izzmeister — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 16:17:12 -0800

Any online repository where one could find future speaking engagements in one place? I am interested in several speakers, many of whom are non-authors.

is there any online site where i could put in the name of the person i'm interested in, and it would give me the next (open to the public, hopefully) speaking engagements by that person?

I know I could research everyone seperately, but I's love to know if there is a site that does it for you.

Think along the lines of the following speakers;

Richard Branson (Virgin Companies)
Jay Sidhu (CEO Sovreign Bank)
Steve Jobs (Apple)

along the same lines, does Amazon.com or anyone else have a service with when an author will have a speaking engagement within x miles of your zip code?

(having problems finding good tags. will add them as they come up.)

Deutschsprachige Aldaily?

austin5000 — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 10:55:27 -0800

I really enjoy Arts and Letters Daily and Political Theory Daily Review. Are there any german equivalents?

Palm OS forums that don't suck?

wheat — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 06:31:43 -0800

I bought my wife a Palm TX for pharmacy school (previously discussed here). Are there any decent Palm forum/portal sites out there that don't suck? I'm looking for something like ipodlounge but for Palm OS? I haven't been able to turn any up. I really need a place where I can find good tips for using the thing and especially for interoperating with others who use PocketPC/Windows Mobile PDAs.

Best CMS for Review Site?

Fishing Nut — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:08:42 -0800

Best open source cms for a digg style review site? For linux based servers. Looking for a community, portal, social networking platform to create a product review site with reviews, photo's, articles, and quality votes from users. I've been looking at the hosted ning, mambo, and some other cms packages. Do you have a few to recommend?

For a new site, would you go with a CMS that does everything, but only marginally well, or multiple applications?

pzarquon — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:59:00 -0800

PortalFilter: For a new website, would you go with a CMS that does everything, but only marginally well, or multiple applications (requiring multiple upgrades and patches)? [MI] Past AskMe threads have been incredibly helpful in learning more about your preferences for various scripts, from bulletin boards to wikis to photo galleries. Thanks to those discussions, I learned a lot, and made good choices in improving several existing sites. Now I've got a new project in mind (now that blogging mommies are trendy, I figured daddies can't be too far behind), and I have the benefit of starting from scratch. Thing is, I don't know how to approach this.

I could go with a whole-site CMS that has modules and plug-ins to add whatever I like (past AskMe threads turned me onto Mambo and Drupal, for example). But none of them, by virtue of doing everything, seem to do any one thing really well (beyond whatever they did initially before feature bloat). My instinct is to instead run more popular scripts for each task - say, phpBB or miniBB, Gallery, MediaWiki, etc. On the other hand, having dealt with phpBB and Gallery exploits, comment spam, and dozens of other problems, I know it'll be a headache trying to keep several different packages current, versus just one whole-site manager.

I know many of you run portal-esque sites... do you hack Drupal or Mambo or PHP-Nuke to do what you want, or do you keep the things you like and make them play relatively well together?

Portal/CMS script for giving an email address to people registering on a domain?

angry jonny — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:24:49 -0800

CMS/Portal development question: Anyone know of a portal/cms script that will give the folks registering an email address at that domain? [magis insum] I have done much dev work, and have built out many a portal and cms driven website using some of the more popular open source scripts out there. I could certainly build the portal and the email systems out separately.

However, this is for an alumni site (ie: free) and I would like to roll out something quickly that would be fairly self sustaining and wouldn't require too much of my time to build and maintain (I know, pipe dreams)

I know that portal/CMS questions have been asked umpteen times before, but the email portion is a twist that I have not seen asked, nor have my google/yahoo/askme searches revealed anything like this. And it is the quick and usually astute answers that compell me to ask.

Simple portal program?

SuzySmith — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 18:25:18 -0800

I'm looking for a simple portal type program, something that can be used by multiple people to post a link to the latest updates to their sites (more inside) A program that works similarly to the one used here I've looked into several programs but they are way above my abilities.

Thanks.