This page will serve as a more in depth review of portaportals features. If you're completely new to portaportal you may be better off reading our QuickStart guide first.

The portaportal model consists of 2 entities, categories and links. Links are your bookmarks, they consist of the URL you wish to store. In addition they can also have a name, a description, or an icon if you like. Categories are like folders. They hold and organize your links. They can also hold other categories to further help with organizing.

Your portal can be viewed in two ways. When you want to make changes of any kind to your portal you should log in by going to the 'my' page URL. That is:http://my.portaportal.com, and you can log in there. Additionally entering your username and password into any Member Login form on the site will also take you to your 'my' page.

When you just want to use (not modify) your links, or you want to be able to share your links with others you can use your 'guest' page. Visitors here can see and use your links but can not make any changes. That's why the form to view a guest page has no password field - it isn't needed.
That form will be located at the following url:
http://guest.portaportal.com
You'll note that the form takes you to the url:
http://guest.portaportal.com/YOUR_USER_NAME.
That url will always take you to your 'guest' page. So you can bookmark it, send it out in emails, link to it from other websites, lots of ways. You can also get to your guest page by entering your username in any Guest Access form on the site or by entering your user name with no password into a Member Login form.
Note that the guest page feature is turned off when you first create a portal. You need to go to your preferences page to turn it on.

Located in the upper right corner of your portaportal window is the Portal Editing console. It is shown here in blue, but the color can vary depending upon the values in your preferences page.

The actions of the buttons are described in this section based on number.

1	This button brings up the "QuickLink" window. It provides a streamlined method of adding links to your portals. Use it to add many links quickly, or leave it open as you surf the web and quickly add interesting websites you come across.
2	Use this button to alphabetize your categories.
3	Clicking on this brings you to a new screen which lets you add categories. This is the first thing you will do after creating your portal. There is no limit to the number of categories you can have.
4	Use the files button to view and manage the files you have uploaded. Here you can see the sizes of the files and delete files that are no longer needed.
5	You will use the logout button in the case where your machine is being used by other people. This secures your site so it will be inaccessible until the password is entered again.
6	This button brings to you the advanced functions page. Many interesting tools are available here. Take a look once you feel comfortable with your portal.
7	This button is what brings you to this tutorial. Use it whenever you are not sure how to get portaportal to behave the way you want.
8	Clicking on this brings you to a screen which lets you remove categories. Be careful with this command as there is no undo. All bookmarks inside a deleted category will be lost.
9	Use this link to access your personal preferences page. It controls lots of options available in the presentation of your portal like color, layout, and guest settings. New options are being added all the time too...

Once created each category will contain some buttons for editing that category. These buttons are located in the category header on the right hand side. Here its shown in bronze, but the actual color can vary based on the values in your preferences page.

The actions of the buttons are described in this section based on number.

1	This button takes you to the Bookmark Addition screen. Use this to add links to the specified category. Most likely this is the button you will use the most.
2	This button brings you to the Bookmark Editing screen. You can use it to fix typos in name, description or URLs, to delete URLs, add or change icons, change the name of the category, or change the parent level of a category.
3	Portaportal allows you to nest categories inside other categories. This button prompts you to enter a name and will create a category inside the selected category.
4	This button shows up when reordering mode is on only. This button will alphabetize the contents of the category.
5	These buttons show up when reordering mode is on only. These buttons will move the category up or down relative to the other categories.
6	This button allows you to collapse categories so that only the title is visible. This is useful for portals with many categories or many levels of categories. Go to your preferences page to choose whether these are open or closed by default.

This is the first place you will visit. Your portal requires all bookmarks to be stored in categories, so your first task will be to create some categories. Just enter their names and click on the "Add" button. Clicking the "Cancel" button will leave your portal unaltered. As you can see above this screen allows you to enter up to 5 categories at once. There is no limit to the number of categories you can have.

At some point you will want to rearrange your portal screen. In the worst case you may want to delete some no longer used categories. In that case you will come to the screen below. Of course your own categories will be shown instead of mine....
Here you will see all of your categories listed with checkboxes next to them. Simply check off the boxes you want deleted and hit the "Delete Categories" button.
Be very careful, once taken this action can not be undone. All bookmarks and nested categories inside the deleted categories will be lost.

After your categories have been created you will want to go about the task of adding the links. Since that's what portaportal is here for, you'll want to start right away.
There are 2 ways to enter bookmarks.
The first method is shown in the screen below. It gives you a chance to add up to 4 bookmarks at a time. For each website you want to bookmark you should type in a name and then the entire URL (Remember to include the '<http://' part). This is the part that will be clickable. If you don't add a name the URL itself will be shown on your portal. You can also specify a description that appears under the link and an icon to appear beside it. Technically you don't even need to specify a URL. Names and descriptions without a linking URL will just appear as notes. Useful!

The actions of the buttons are described in this section based on number.

1	Put the title of your link here. This is the text that will be clickable. If you leave this blank the url of the link will be shown instead.
2	The url field denotes the web site the user is taken to when they click on the title. If you leave this blank the title is shown without being a link, as a note as it were.
3	When this option is on the link will not show up in your guest page, this is useful when preparing lessons in advance.
4	The description is some extra text, not clickable, that appears under the title. It can be used to further explain the purpose of this link.
5	Use this menu to choose from among some different icons to show off your link.

Finally click the "Add Links" button. The new sites will have been added to your portal. There is no limit on the number of links a category can contain.

Once bookmarks have been added to your portal they may need to be edited or deleted.

This will bring you to the "Edit Bookmarks" screen shown below.

1	This field contains the category's name. Changing it here will be saved when you click OK.
2	Use this popup menu to change the hierarchy of your subcategories. You can move a category from the default 'Top Level' and place it inside another category, or move an existing subcategory out.
3	Use this popup menu to control this folder's initial appearance. You can set it to always be open or always be closed. Shown here is the default state. To use the portal's default state, set it using the preferences page.
4	This checkbox will control whether the category will be visible to people visiting your guest page. Use this to store a bunch of links in advance and spring it on your class by unchecking this control.
The controls in this section are repeated for each link in this category. Each control in this box only applies to that link.
5	Use this checkbox to delete this link when you click the OK button below. This cannot be undone.
6	When this checkbox is on the link will not be shown on your guest page. This is useful when preparing lessons in advance.
7	This field holds the title for this link. You aren't required to put anything in there though. Links without a title will display the URL as the title.
8	This field holds the URL for the link. It's the place your web browser is taken to when you click on the link. Even this is not required. Links without URLs are just displayed as unclickable notes.
9	Another optional field, this will place a small text description under the link title.
10	This popup menu offers a choice of icons you can use to draw attention to new, or outstanding links.

After adding some categories and bookmarks you can venture into the preferences screen. Here you can control the look and feel of your portal. The preferences page is divided into 4 sections. An example of the first section is shown below: The action of the buttons is described in the section based on number.

1 & 2	Enter your name here. Please use your real name, otherwise its just rude, and it makes it much easier to locate your account if there is a problem.
3	This field should show your email address. If it is wrong please correct it below. If you forget your user name or password this will be the only way you can retrieve that information.
4	Click on this link if you want to change your username. You will be taken to a page that will let you change it (if the new name is available of course). Remember there is no separate guest login, so changing the username will also change the name of the guest portal.
5	Click on this link if you want to change your password. You will be taken to a page that will let you change it.
6	Click on this link if you want to change your email address. You will be taken to a page that will let you change it.

1	This popup menu lets you arrange the layout of your portal by letting you choose the number of categories in a row. The float option does not keep strict number of categories in a row, but lets as many as can fit in a row do so.
2	This popup menu lets you set the color scheme for your portal.
3	To make large portals easier to navigate you can opt to have your headers collapsed whenever someone first goes to your portal.
4	When this checkbox is on the URL's (web addresses) will be visible below the link names in your categories. This lets you print out your portal in a useful state.
5	Turning on this checkbox will transform the colors in your portal to very bright versions, good for kids and headaches...

1	This popup menu controls whether your portal will be visible to guests or not. You must turn this to "allow guest access" before any of the other guest functions will work. When portals are first created this setting is off.
2	This field holds the text that will show up in the heading of your portal's guest page. Use it to greet your guests! The text will be displayed on the left side of your portal just below the portaportal logo.
3	This field controls what the window title bar will read on your guest portal. Its helpful to make this descriptive as it is the text the user will see in their bookmarks if they add your guest page to their browser's bookmarks.
4	If this checkbox is on your guest portal will have a button in the control area that will allow guests to send you email. If this setting is off there are no buttons shown.
5	This setting controls whether guests will see the page counter when they visit. Their pages are still counted but the results are not shown.

1	This popup menu allows the user to change the order of the categories or the urls inside a specific category. Reordering mode has 3 different settings. Off - This presents the user with the fastest loading and cleanest interface, however links can only be added to the end of a folder, and cannot be moved. Old Style - In this mode all folders and links on your portal are adorned with small buttons allowing you to move them up and down in the order of their folders. In addition reordering mode adds an 'alphabetize' button to each folder. Drag and Drop (experimental!) - Drag and Drop mode still keeps the alphabetize button and the directional arrows on the folders as regular reordering mode, but adds a new feature. Now links can not only be dragged around a folder, but can be dragged between folders. You asked for it, you got it! portaportal delivers! Be warned, drag and drop mode can cause larger portals to load very slowly!
2	This checkbox controls the behavior when your links are clicked on. If the checkbox is on new pages will open up in new windows, leaving your portal still visible when the new window is dismissed. This applies to your guest page as well as your 'my' page.
3	If this checkbox is on a popup menu will appear under the portaportal logo that lets you switch between all of your portals. It determines your portals based on your email address. You will still need to log into each portal as you switch.