Personalization

Most portals contain thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pages of content, most of which is not of interest to a specific user. Personalization provides a way to cut through the clutter and provide relevant, or at least potentially relevant, information to each user .

The most common form of personalization is to dynamically create pages that vary depending on data in the user's personal profile. For instance, a singles site might display personal ads from individuals who share a user's interests or commentary about issues in which the user is interested.

When I go to amazon.com, I am greeted by "Hello, James J. Townsend," instantly putting me at ease and in the mood to buy books, DVDs, and more. This greeting is just the tip of the Amazon personalization iceberg. From the home page (Figure 2.5), I can see that there are recommendations just for me, special New for You items, messages, and even, buried at the bottom of the page, the offer to "Make $345.95 Selling Your Past Purchases at amazon.com Today!" Luckily, times have not been so hard that I must part with my last 25 purchases at amazon.com.

Figure 2.5. Amazon.com Home Page with Personalization ( 2002 Amazon.com, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Another aspect of personalization is localization ”the ability to cater to users based on their geographic location. For instance, you may want to support multiple languages on your portal. Users would specify the language of choice in their profile, and the personalization engine would dynamically point users to content in the target language. Chapter 8 covers how to use the personalization capabilities of Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to bring this functionality to your .NET portal.