Web Portal also known as Content Management software provides by far the easiest and professional looking means to a great looking and easy to maintain web site.

We use Mambo Open Source which in conjunction with a web hosting package that supports php and mysql will allow you to create a web site without having to do any programming. In fact with use of the wysiwyg editor provided, you do not actually even have to know html!

Portal software means you can add content to your web site via a simple menu driven interface. Portals will allow you to select what content is published and in the case of Mambo even how long you want something to be published for.

Portal software will also manage banner advertsing, RSS newsfeeds, and depending on the Portal, there may well be a large number of custom components available to perform tasks such as integration with Bulletin Board systems.

One of the great features of portals is that they work with templates, this means that by selecting or changing the template for your site, you can radically change how it looks. Thus all sites using the same Portal software do not look the same. A good Portal will also make use of cascading style sheets (CSS) which allows further cusomisation of the look and feel.

However as much as Portal software "dumbs down" web site design, it will always be the case that the best sites have at least some custom coding. Good Portal software like Mambo allows you to create your own components that appear integrated into Mambo. The MarsJupiter web site for example contains various components/modules that are not part of a standard Mambo installation. Some are from the wide range of user contributions to Mambo and some have been coded in house to provide features special to our site.