Create a free web portal with RSS and vibes

Vibes as in Netvibes. Now, here is another use for an RSS aggregator ,turn it into your own or group web portal for free. I came across this post,Creating a Librarian’s Info-Portal with Netvibes and RSS ,from Tame the Web.

What Web page comes up when your staff members open their Web browsers on the service desk or at their own desks? Is it the library’s Web site? That’s a good choice, especially if you have constantly updating news on the front page of your library blog. Perhaps you have your catalog, a search engine, or a commercial news site? All are OK choices–but why not build your own info-portal for your staff with the best of all of these worlds?

RSS (really simple syndication or rich site summary) allows us to put content from one place into another with some reasonably simple coding. Pair that with a Web-based aggregator site, and you have everything you need at your fingertips.[Source]

The post is quite helpful and will give you enough tips to set up your free portal. Netvibes is the ideal platform for this portal mainly because it is:

1) Free

2) Easy to Build

3) RSS, Atom and other Web Feeds can be easily added.

4) Net-vibes displays the field in a similar way a web portal would.

5) There are several plug-ins that could be used to customize the feel of the site.

This really is a practical post from Tame the Web.