How to build a community portal

Question

jnattey 0 Newbie Poster

22 Years Ago

Hello,
I want to build a community portal for my neighborhood and need help. Where can I find books, tutorials or examples on how to build your own portal?
Thanks a mil
Joseph

off-topic social-media

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Latest Post 17 Years Ago Latest Post by SHendrick

Dani AI

Generated 9 Months Ago

A short, practical blueprint to move a neighborhood portal from idea to live — focused on what to build first, how to keep risk low, and a tiny technical starter you can copy-paste.

Start by locking scope and jobs-to-be-done. Use a quick survey or a 1–2 page signup form to confirm the top 3 things neighbors actually want (announcements, events, classifieds, etc.). Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that solves those core tasks before adding extras. Keep the launch team small: one content editor, one moderator, one tech lead.

Suggested phased plan:

Phase 1 (MVP): announcements, events calendar, simple moderated discussion space, email digest, contact/FAQ.
Phase 2: classifieds/local business directory, photo gallery, basic search, mobile-responsive UI.
Phase 3: paid listings, APIs or a decoupled content layer so content can be reused for apps or kiosks. A headless/decoupled approach is worth considering if you expect multiple delivery channels. (contentful.com)

Technical essentials (keep it simple at first):

Use managed hosting or a small VPS, offload static assets to a CDN, enforce HTTPS, and schedule daily DB backups.
Measure and optimize performance (Core Web Vitals) from day one and use caching for lists and images. (web.dev)

Minimal user schema to get started (example):

CREATE TABLE users (
  id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL UNIQUE,
  password_hash VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
  display_name VARCHAR(100),
  role ENUM('member','editor','admin') DEFAULT 'member',
  created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

Safety, privacy, and moderation: follow established auth/session best practices (MFA, proper password hashing, rate limits) and keep an audit trail; formalize community rules and a moderator program (volunteer + staff escalation). These practices are covered in industry guidance for authentication and moderator programs. (cheatsheetseries.owasp.org)

Troubleshooting tip: if an install fails, check server error logs, DB credentials, file permissions, and PHP/DB version compatibility; use a local Docker environment to reproduce problems before changing production.

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Dani 5,664 The Queen of DaniWeb

22 Years Ago

A portal can mean so many things nowadays. Do you want it to have unique content? Do you want it to be more like the MSN/Yahoo portals? Do you want a forum? etc. It would almost definitely need to require a backend web development language such as PHP. Could you please provide some more information as to exactly what you're looking for so that we can offer more help?

mddv 0 Junior Poster

22 Years Ago

My site is a portal << snipped to comply with forum policy >> and i uses mambo OS and it is great and i would say far better than PHP-Nuke or Post-Nuke. If you need any help with anythink in setting up your mambo portal let me know and i will be happy to help you or anyone else that are going to use mambo.

I have tried Post-Nuke, PHP-Nuke and E107 portal software and they are nothing compared to mambo. The next best i would say is e107.

Email me at:
For any help that you require and i will try my best to answer any question you may have.

Hope mambo is the CMS for you cos it is for me.

Member #2466

22 Years Ago

Try mambo...it's easy to use and easy to configure..and the documentation is fantastic.

http://mamboserver.com

Vinoth 0 Junior Poster

22 Years Ago

I am developing my own portal, but still i recommand you to use mambo alone/

Monte 39 Junior Poster

22 Years Ago

PHPNuke is nice, but for just what you said, i agree with the use of mambo.

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jnattey 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 1 · 2004-06-15T22:51:35+00:00

Thanks for the quick response. Basically I want to provide something like a one-stop information portal. Information such as travel, sports, schools, community anouncements etc. I guess it will have content.

joseph

Vinoth 0 Junior Poster · Answer 2 · 2004-07-14T12:44:03+00:00

Vinoth 0 Junior Poster

22 Years Ago

Mambo was awarded the best open source this year

temi 0 Light Poster · Answer 3 · 2004-08-31T13:12:30+00:00

I use postnuke to power some of my sites: << snipped to comply with forum policy >> Its and excellent stable and robust CMS, great for building portals

Asif 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 4 · 2004-09-06T17:38:15+00:00

Asif 0 Newbie Poster

22 Years Ago

can anyone tell me the charges that mambo has

sesom 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 5 · 2004-09-14T09:30:34+00:00

yeah, you can try Mambo open source, add some forums. chat and all that stuff
you can visit my site that i just build for about a week or so for my community in Malaysia, << snipped to comply with forum policy >> u can find my email there and if you need futher help just mail o.k?:)

Lonny 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 6 · 2004-09-14T14:32:32+00:00

Hello,
I want to build a community portal for my neighborhood and need help. Where can I find books, tutorials or examples on how to build your own portal?
Thanks a mil
Joseph

Hey Joseph,

I'm pro postnuke.com. I've used it on several sites and you can get alot of plugin features from the community. Calendars, forums, games, photo galleries, classifieds, personals, etc. It has all levels of permissions for users and admins.

You can see one of the sites in action here.

<< snipped to comply with forum policy >>

If you are interested in building something like that, let me know. you can email me at

Best regards,

Lonny

temi 0 Light Poster · Answer 7 · 2004-09-15T02:35:36+00:00

can anyone tell me the charges that mambo has

Open source sort of mean free so there are no charges for mambo
Temi

edprush 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 8 · 2004-11-02T03:17:19+00:00

Open source sort of mean free so there are no charges for mambo
Temi

Hi folks. This is my first post!

I have read that mambo should be run on a dedicated server...have you found this to be the case?

thanks.

sesom 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 9 · 2004-11-02T13:56:24+00:00

Hi folks. This is my first post!
I have read that mambo should be run on a dedicated server...have you found this to be the case?
thanks.

no u do not need a dedicated server.......
i personnaly host on shared hosting
visit my site using mambo
<< snipped to comply with forum policy >>

is the company i use to host my site... :p

sesom 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 10 · 2005-01-21T14:21:46+00:00

so what happened...did u build yr community?

it's been so long since my last post..to busy :D :cool:

jnattey 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 11 · 2005-01-26T00:12:45+00:00

so what happened...did u build yr community?
it's been so long since my last post..to busy :D :cool:

No. Could not install mambo

C-raw 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 12 · 2007-11-16T09:01:40+00:00

This is for cscgal I to am trying develop a portal page like msn/yahoo but I am lost and have a few questions for you were do I start? I really would like to start with a good template them mod. To what I want it to look like what do you think of using 1&1 for this project? I need some help

Dani 5,664 The Queen of DaniWeb Administrator Featured Poster · Answer 13 · 2007-11-28T19:19:32+00:00

Wow, easy there. I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. A portal page is going to be dynamic, which means that it will be based on a server side programming language. You'll need to research how to find a good web hosting company with database support, and set up a database. You'll then need to find some type of portal script to power this new database-driven website.

wanya -2 Newbie Poster · Answer 14 · 2008-07-10T19:59:12+00:00

As far as I am concern,you have two major options to choose from and that's "Drupal or Joomla".The open source softwares are constantly being designed or created with your wishes and thoughts in mind.Once installed and setup,you need no technical know-how to operate any of these state-of-the-art CMS.Anything you can think of is achievable expecially with drupal as it is the most optimized cms in recent times for SEO

SHendrick 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 15 · 2008-09-03T07:44:18+00:00

This is a problem I'm working on myself. My employer has spec'd a very ambitious community portal and I am lost. Joomla! doesn't seem to offer the different types of users I want and Drupal doesn't seem as well supported. But I've never done anything like this so I'm not even sure what I'm talking about.

I'd like to use php/mySQL on an Apache server.
We'll have a small handful of admins, two types of content providers who can manage access to their own sections and tens of thousands of users with different types of paid and free access.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Even if it's 'hire someone who knows what they're doing'.

wanya -2 Newbie Poster · Answer 16 · 2008-09-03T09:25:22+00:00

This is a problem I'm working on myself. My employer has spec'd a very ambitious community portal and I am lost. Joomla! doesn't seem to offer the different types of users I want and Drupal doesn't seem as well supported. But I've never done anything like this so I'm not even sure what I'm talking about.
I'd like to use php/mySQL on an Apache server.
We'll have a small handful of admins, two types of content providers who can manage access to their own sections and tens of thousands of users with different types of paid and free access.
Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Even if it's 'hire someone who knows what they're doing'.

Hiya,
I have the high-tech to help with community portal.I have the know-how to offer just what you are looking for and within a reasonable short period of time.I can offer my services and help to you for up to one year at no extra cost provided you hire me to do the job.I have been working with Drupal for 4yrs and I do also offer Drupal CMS Training.Drupal will do exactly what you want and I can also tweak it to fit into your shoe.Send me a private message if you are interested and then we can take it from there.
cheers

musicbox -2 Junior Poster · Answer 17 · 2008-09-24T02:33:32+00:00

download drupal then start adding new mods and make it online.

SHendrick 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 18 · 2008-09-24T12:16:28+00:00

download drupal then start adding new mods and make it online.

One step ahead of you. I'm having a bit of trouble grokking the cck. Right now I'm putting the archive section together and I want to set up a podcast section with 200ish hosts and several thousand mp3s.

I've ordered a couple Drupal 6 books and I registered for the Bay Area Drupal Camp, badcamp.net. I feel like I'm missing the underlying idea for Drupal and I'm hoping that a face to face conversation with a guru will really help me understand what it's all about.

How to build a community portal

Dani AI

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