Remember portals? Back in the 1990s, when fortunes were made from promises to capture eyeballs and click-throughs, everyone wanted their homepage to be the gateway to the internet.
Governments, both national and local, are still at it, with mixed results. The big divide is between thin and thick: is a portal a glorified page of links, or going after an audience in its own right?
UK Online, the national portal run by the Office of the e-Envoy, is unashamedly content-thick. It tries to encourage return visits with a changing front page of features and news. The site quickly earned the nickname "Pravda.com" for its relentless good news about government initiatives, but recent splashes have covered everything from Sars to the National Audit Office's report on the electricity industry. This week, the banner is recruiting volunteers to become "internet angels", which may irritate users merely trying to contact a government office.
The US equivalent is thinner on news content, though brasher with graphics - on the site it is always Fourth of July. When the space shuttle Columbia exploded in February, the site took more than a day to take notice. Like the French portal, its main function is as a search engine to government. (The French government webmasters save their hot air for the prime ministerial site .)
Even if it is pure propaganda, national governments always have e-content on tap. But how can local authorities create a thick portal? Several seem to think it is worth the effort.
The pioneer is Rutland's award-winning Rutnet, which has been on the web since 1996. Rutland is England's smallest county, and visitors to the site are presented with a map of the county that Whitehall could not abolish, a clock showing Rutland Standard Time and links to major international news stories. The portal also hosts the county council's services, such as dial-a-ride for elderly and disabled people.
Another small authority with a distinctive identity is Hartlepool. It is planning to create what could be the most content-thick local portal yet. The site, so far unnamed, is being developed by a local partnership under the chairmanship of the local MP, Peter Mandelson. "It will catch on and it will become addictive," says Mandelson.
An electronic gateway to Hartlepool was seen as an "early win" for the town's e-strategy, which, among other things, aims to encourage local small businesses to use the internet.
The £500,000 portal, due to go on the web this autumn, will offer a conventional A-Z of services, organised around life episodes such as leaving school or having a baby. But instead of just clicking through to other organisations' sites, it will trawl them for relevant information for repackaging with a Hartlepool slant.
"We don't want a veneer-thin portal which clicks to other web sites," says Gus McGill of SX3, an IT services firm developing the portal for the partnership. "What we want to do is suck the information out and present it in one place."
The buzzword is "remote authoring" - outside agencies such as the NHS and police forces will supply information. The idea is bold, but it raises questions ranging from editorial control to copyright to budgets.
One of the most common problems is how to fund portals once the start-up budget has been spent (Rutnet is one of the few to carry commercial sponsorship).
McGill says that a cross-cutting local portal can make a real difference to quality of life, in dealing with abandoned cars, for example, where the police, the council and a tow-away company are involved.
But the Hartlepool portal will also have softer content. The team is talking to the local paper, the Hartlepool Mail, about taking a feed of local news. Other ideas are webcams (McGill thinks weddings will be interesting) and weblogs. The aim is to present a picture of what it is like to live and work in Hartlepool, as well as a trip down memory lane for Hartlepoolers overseas.
"We want to create something that is funky, interesting, where you want to go every day," says McGill.
