Creating portal for organizational purposes

by Sapphire (May 9, 2005)

If you want to get anywhere online, organization is important. And it’s easier than you might think. Some people use applications on their home computer and keep their organizational tools offline. That’s fine, if that works for you. But I like being able to work from more than one computer, so that means I need everything online. Which in turn means everything needs to be kept away from prying eyes.

Believe me, if I can pull this off, so can you. This is my solution to a convenient and secure online portal that’ll contain every link and bit of information I need.

First, choose a CMS (content management) program. There are several in Fantastico, and most will do what you want. If you’re not comfortable installing a php program yourself, just use one from the Fantastico install, and keep things simple - almost any of them will do well enough for now. Try a few out, see which ones suit you. The features I look for are a links portal, a forum, and a newsfeed (for reading other people’s feeds). My personal choice is Dragonfly CMS, and I also recommend e107. Both of these require you to install them, but they’re easy.

Be sure to install to a subfolder, not your main directory. This is so you can password protect that directory later.

Another resource for finding the perfect CMS is OpenSourceCMS, a site where you can demo a bunch of these programs - very cool site.

Most CMS programs come with plug-ins or modules - little add-ons that allow you to do more things. For example, Dragonfly doesn’t ship with a links portal, but installing one is incredibly simple, and then it has every feature I want.

Once you’ve got your CMS ready to go, it’s time to organize it so you can have the information you need at your fingertips.

Posted in Development & Design, Staying on Track
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