How to make your own Portal
(This is required reading from Week 5, assignment 4. Making a portal is an optional assignment in Week 6.)

Saving links in your browser Favorites or Bookmarks is only one way to maintain access to your favorite Internet sites.

The other way is to create your own Portal and make it your default Home Page on your Browser. You can create a Portal in Word or any HTML-editing program such as FrontPage or DreamWeaver.

1. Create a table of columns and rows.

2. Either copy and paste the hyperlinks from your browser's address bar into each cell of your table. Or type in a key word and short definition of the link and embed the URL into the hyperlink function.

Sidebar Lesson: How to embed URLs to words and pictures

How to Access your own Portal

Option 1: Make your Portal your browser's Home page by posting the portal file to the Internet
Option 2: Make your Portal  your browser's Home page by keeping the portal file on your computer
Option 3: Making your Portal a Favorite or Bookmark by linking to it with your broswer either on the Internet or on your computer

 Making your Portal your Home page

Step One:  Go to Tools > Internet Options...

Step Two: The first entry is Home page. Type any URL you want and click OK. You can link to a portal on your computer by typing the path to where the file is saved.

 Don't Reinvent the Wheel

Save the existing  Master Teacher Resource Portal to your computer. Open it with an HTML-editor like FrontPage, Word, or DreamWeaver and modify it as you like. Delete entries. Move entries. Cut or add columns and rows. Move entries with cut/paste or drag and drop.

(Sidebar learning: How to FTP your Portal to the Internet)