The Portal package is in essence a simple window manager which takes content generated by OpenACS packages and organizes them into a set of portlet windows on one or more pages. We need to define some terms to understand how the Portal package works.

• A portal datasource is a set of procedures and templates which satisify the portal's portal_datasource service contract. They are usually found in packages named "package-key-portlet" (for instance "forums-portlet"). Generally portlet packages define at least two portal datasources - a user portal datasource intended for general use, and an administration portal datasource that is meant to be used by administrators only.

• A portal is a set of zero or more pages controlled by the portal package.

• A page is a set of zero or more regions (columns) mapped to a portal.

• A region is a set of zero or elements that are mapped to a page.

• An element is an instantiation of a portal datasource, mapped to a region.

The portal package was originally integrated with .LRN. Work is underway to make it work independently in OpenACS.