Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Software and Control Panels : Personal Home Page Portal?

[GregX59]

I'm wondering if this package exists.

I want to be able to offer my customers a personal portal home page. Something similar to a Yahoo home page, but less entertainment based. I want calendar, alarms, events, links, a "note-pad" for easily leaving notes for yourself or other users, contacts, and so forth. Interface for easily changing things like links and calendar entries. I would prefer open source PHP.

I have found a few "group-ware" packages that come somewhat close, but still not quite close enough.

I don't want to re-invent the wheel, so before I begin writing and piecing this together myself, I wanted to check with this incredible knowledgebase on Webhosting Talk.

[phpcoder]

Have you tried looking at PHP/mySQL based blogs at hotscripts.com yet? If not, you should

[kris1351]

There are actually all of those modules available for Mambo and it works great for a home portal. We have Gallery, Guestbook, Traffic Monitor, Paypal Donation and a few background modules running. We are getting ready to break the gallery into two different galleries for a public one and the private kids gallery.

You can see ours at http://www.kkeele.com

[GregX59]

Thanks for the responses.

Kris - that might work. I was thinking it might be gross overkill to use a full featured content management system for a home page, but I like your use of it. And you hit on another thing - I want to offer password protect on at least parts of it. With the calendar functions I don't want the world knowing where people's kids are or when families are taking vacations.

Also, if I use Mambo, I can let Fantastico install it. That is, if it can figure out how to do it. I get very few successful installations out of Fantastico for anything.

[GregX59]

I installed Mambo (Fantastico did a pretty decent job on this one!), but it's not what I'm looking for. Great package, but the most important part for me, the calendar, is not part of the package, and the most popular calendar module doesn't meet my needs at all.

Still searching...

[Jimerson]

I have used php-nuke, pc-nuke, and pn something cant recall the name right now... Ill post back ifI remember it.

[kris1351]

The Nuke programs are nice, I would recommend installing them yourself instead of with Fantastico. It is easier to keep them up to date as they need to be updated basically like phpBB does.

[funkytaco]

You can always make out a PostNuke or PHPNuke when I see one. I really don't like browsing them because right out of the box the website is too busy, and the content on those websites is usually just news or downloads.

I do like Mambo, though. Very simple to make modules for, very clean and pretty.

[GregX59]

Thanks all. I've been looking over many different packages and NOTHING has what I'm looking for. I could cobble together existing open source packages, but I'd have to significantly modify them to get what I want. Maybe I should invest more time into learning Mambo - if I'm going to write something at least that gives me the base framework.

But does anyone else agree that this could be a great selling point for personal home page hosting? Offer a special that pre-installs an on-line personal and family organization package? I can't be the first person to be searching for this solution.