how to do something like my.yahoo?

[dopcombo]

Hey guys. I just posted something in software asking for help on this but i figured most of u were in here and i really needed some help really quick.

so to make a long story short.....

My boss wants to know how we can go about making our website customizable like my.yahoo.
Where the user can access the website and be able to choose the content that he wants on it.
When he said this, the first thing that came to mind was my.yahoo where u can choose to read ur email, or the news... or maybe the weather.

Any help guys? What sort of software am i looking at? Or is it just a plain case of html and cookies??

 

[yoda291]

I imagine there'd be a form involved to sign up and log in users, plus some way to store these preferences ... prolly a database...which is logical, so I assume that you mean the entire process of authenticating the user. There are lots of ways to do it. Cookies are a popular means to do it. Sun has the Servlet Session API which is dedicated to this particular task, but in the end usually boils down to cookies anyways. But I don't think you need any software beyond your current site editors.

 

[dopcombo]

So i guess it really is a case of javascript, cookies and lots of code?
hmm....
HELP!!!!

I guess you are right in the case of a simple database connected to the login ID, in the usual way. That database would probably provide the variables which ascertain as to whether a certain category appears on the site. of course, there would have to be secure log-in procedures, verifications...

 

[markjrubin]

You are correct. Cookies and LOTS of code. Many sites provide RDF feeds of their news that you can parse in (using an XML parser) to your site.

 

[dopcombo]

Right...

So from a completely static website with a separate internal office email system (big system though), how much man-hours would you expect on average to complete this er... interactive portal access page which would link me to the email system and a collection of news pages?

thanks for all the replies so far.