Our previous website and web portal development work involved Microsoft web server and collaboration technology (Internet Information Server and SharePoint Server), but licensing costs can mount, especially if hosted on a local machine. For quite awhile, we have wondered how easily an inexpensive web portal could be constructed for a small business using industry standard, "shareware" web development platforms and tools, hosted remotely.
We found an eager customer, but there is no need to describe the operation of the resulting web portal. The customer is Nimble Solutions itself, and you are in the new portal now!
Here are our web portal design highlights:
- Hosted by Go Daddy, the dominant company in the domain and website hosting space, with an annual cost < $100
- 150 GB of disk space available
- 1,500 GB of monthly data transfer
- Incorporates tools from DotNetNuke, the leading open-source web content Management System (CMS) and application development platform for Microsoft .Net
- Uses the DotNetNuke Community edition of the CMS which is free of charge
- Utilizes an outside purchased DotNetNuke "skin", a website scheme for consistent visual appearance and layout that greatly accelerates website and portal construction and increases the professional look of the site
- IIS7 web server
- Two Microsoft SQL databases available for the portal, one used exclusively by the DotNetNuke CMS itself