SimplePortal is always developing, and is produced with the user in mind first. User feedback is the number one method of growth for SimplePortal, and our users are always finding ways for Simpleportal to grow. SimplePortal stays competitive with other portal software by adding numerous user-requested features such as articles, block types, and the ability to completely customize the portal page.
All this and SimplePortal has remained Simple! SimplePortal is built for simplicity and ease of use; ensuring the average forum administrator can install SimplePortal, configure a few settings, and show off the brand-new portal to the users in minutes. Confusing menus, undesired pre-loaded blocks and settings that cannot be found are all avoided as much as possible. Because when it comes down to it, SimplePortal is YOUR portal, and should reflect your taste as much as possible.
Blocks are small display areas you can add to the portal page or to forum pages. You can use blocks to add links for your users, or to show who is online. With Simple Portal, the content part of any page can have LEFT and RIGHT blocks in left and right sidebars, and TOP and BOTTOM blocks between the sidebars above and below the central main content area. There are also overall HEADER and FOOTER blocks that you can load with your content.
There are many built in blocks available, so you can come up with a layout that suits your site. Examples of blocks that are available are: Recent Attachments, Stats, Board News, Custom PHP, Custom HTML, Polls, Shoutbox, Recent Topics, User Info and many more.
With the article system enabled, you can easily publish them directly on the Portal, no block is necessary. You can also show articles on any SimplePortal Page, or wherever you have blocks displayed, using an article block.
You can create your articles using BBCode, HTML or even PHP depending on your needs. You can attach images to your articles and place them inline or aligned to the left or right to give them a blog look and feel.
Articles are assigned to and organized by categories. You can easily create different categories, and your users can then browse articles by category. No blog system would be complete without a comment functionality and SimplePortal makes that easy.
The Simple Portal Custom page is something like the SimplePortal Portal Page. It has areas for blocks surrounding a central area. The center area of a Simple Portal Custom Page is like a Simple Portal Block. The center area is similar to a custom BBC, HTML or PHP block.
When you create or edit a new Simple Portal Page, you will choose from BBC, HTML or PHP. You will input your text, and save your page. You can discover the URL of the new page by looking at the pages list.
If you want links to your new page to appear somewhere that others can see, you will have to place these links yourself. But don't worry -- this part is simple.