Description

Το NTUAPortal is an online application based on the concepts of a Portal and Content Management.
A Portal represents a website that provides a single point of access to information and services. On the other hand, a Content Management System is an application for organizing and facilitating the collaborative creation of documents, articles, and other content.

NTUAPortal meets these requirements by offering a robust and scalable framework for creating and managing dynamic websites with various types of content. It enables organizations to create portals that combine functionality and resources into a single environment, while also implementing business policies and security requirements, and providing personalized information views for end users.

From the end user's perspective, a portal based on the NTUAPortal application is a website with pages organized in tabs. Each page contains a number of subpages and one or more modules – individual windows displaying content ranging from static HTML to complex online services.
A page can contain multiple modules, providing users with access to different information and tools in a single location.
Authorized users can also customize the portal by adding pages, modules to them, and modifying the appearance and feel of the environment.

The main features and advantages of the NTUAPortal framework are as follows:

• Versatility: NTUAPortal is an ideal application for creating and developing projects such as commercial websites, corporate intranets and extranets, as well as educational portals.
• User Friendly NTUAPortal is designed to help users manage all aspects of the website.
• Security – Personalization: Only authorized individuals can access the portal. Their authorization level determines which information will be displayed to them. This means that a single portal can effectively manage the informational needs of multiple user groups.
• Feature-Rich: It offers a set of built-in tools that provide powerful functionality. Website design, content management, security, and member management options are easily manageable and customizable with these tools.
• Scalability: It is capable of creating the most complex websites with its built-in features, but also allows developers to easily develop and integrate custom modules and tools.
• Data-centric: It is 100% data-driven. All information related to the design, security, and content of the website is stored and retrieved from a database.
  
  

  The NTUAPortal application is built on Microsoft's ASP.NET platform and developed using the Visual Basic programming language.
  The database management system used for data storage is Microsoft SQL Server. It can be easily installed and hosted with all Windows hosting packages.
  
  

  In the remaining section of the document, the term «portal» will be used to describe a website, as well as the associated data, hosted on an instance of the NTUAPortal application.
  
  

  Technical Requirements

  
  
  1. Software Requirements
  The prerequisites for NTUAPortal to install and run a new website are:

  • Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Microsoft Windows 2003 Server.
  • Web Server: Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 5 or a later version, included with Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP Professional, and Windows 2003 Server.
    Please note that IIS is not included in the Windows XP Home edition.
  • Microsoft .NET Runtime: ASP.NET 1.1, included in the .NET Framework version 1.1 package.
  • Database Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (or a later version) or Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine (MSDE) version 2000 (or a later version).
    MSDE is a free, lightweight version of SQL Server.
    
    

    2. Hardware Requirements
    Hardware requirements for NTUAPortal are determined by the software needed to run the application, as described above. NTUAPortal can be installed and operated on any system running this software.
    
    

    The initial required disk space for installing NTUAPortal is approximately 3.5 GB (2 GB for the application and 1.5 GB for the database).
    However, the actual required space depends on the size of the content added to the website (content added to the database or documents, images, media files, XML files, etc., uploaded to the server).

    Finally, since NTUAPortal is a web-based application, it is preferable for the server to have a large amount of RAM (1 GB or more) to avoid disk swapping.
    
    

    3. Server Hosting Requirements
    In addition to the software and hardware requirements needed by the NTUAPortal, it is important to mention an additional condition in the case of third-party hosting providers:

  • File Permissions: NTUAPortal requires that the account under which the ASP.NET process runs has full control permissions over the root installation folder.
    By default, the ASP.NET account runs on Windows 2000 and Windows XP under the \ASPNET account, and on Windows 2003 under the NTAUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE account.