The .LRN portal package ("new-portal") is intimately integrated with .LRN. In particular, the portal package is unable to configure portal datasource instances (elements) and the portal datasources do not contain code to configure themselves with reasonable defaults.

The .LRN portal package and portal datasources are dependent on .LRN applets to perform these tasks. Since .LRN applets are written with explicit knowledge of the .LRN framework, this means that "new-portal" will not work in the base OpenACS toolkit.

Currently work is underway to make the portal package usable outside .LRN. In addition, the portal package has been rewritten to undertake more work previously done by portal datasources. In the new framework, portal datasources are greatly simplified. Let's look at a few examples ...