I'm new to DotNetNuke and am setting up a portal for our k-12 school district.  We plan to take advantage of the user account features by having staff and members of the public register with our site.  Do I setup one portal for the entire organization or should I setup multiple portals, one for each of our major divisions?  Multiple portals might be easier for security reasons but we go the multiple route how do I manage user accounts so people don't have to register with each portal?  I don't have a lot of web development experience so any words of wisdom are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Phil

Phil,

   Half of me wants to agree with Mike and the other half wants to suggest multiple portals.  The answer really depends on your situation. Off the top of my head here are some questions I would ask:

1. Who will be maintaining the pages and content?  If you decide to give staff the ability to upload content and files and choose 1 portal then you will need to train them on security roles.  A scenario where a staff member posts a document they meant to only share with other staff is viewable to public is an obvious example ripe with issues. A multi-portal scenario would help define the security boundaries more easily

2. Would it serve as both an internal website and external website? If just external then 1 portal makes sense.

3. How many people will be given admin privileges? If you are the only one then 1 portal makes sense, if a lot of people need their hand in the cookie jar then multi-portals is safer on many levels.

If you provide more details we could help you think through issues you might not be foreseeing

Craig

Mike,

Thanks for the reply.  I looked at your web site.  I currently am doing something similar I just wasn't sure if I was making design decisions now that I would regret later.  I can see having several thousand registered users with about 2 dozen different page editor roles.  It's managable but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

Phil