International informational portal, which includes an interactive online newspaper, blogosphere and bulletin board. Portal is comfortable for multilingual people. There is the possibility to publish articles with translation on different languages.

1. International infoportal GrandInform
Portal GrandInform provides
information and services in different
languages for many countries and
regions.
Currently implemented only basic
services, such as blogosphere,
newspaper and a system for publishing
classified ads.
All services are integrated in a common
environment, creating the impression of
a single application that facilitates the
user to work on the portal.
With the development of the portal is supposed to create new modules, such as a shop, a freelance
service for standard tasks or other, original modules, that are not in the market.
Currently there are installed modules for 4 countries (highlighted in color). However, in the process
of localization of software, can be installed more countries and languages.

2. Modular structure of the portal
The portal has a modular structure that allows its
further development without effect of
"patchwork". All modules fall into one pattern,
consisting of the head, upper and lower menus,
right and left margins for en additional
information and/or advert banners.
The presence of a single menu creates an effect
of the "regular" application. In my opinion, it
provides a more intuitive, and familiar
environment, reducing of time to adapt the user
to the new portal.
The modular structure is also good for technical reasons, since enables organically divide the area
of responsibility for members of a development team, simplifies design and installation of new
modules.
Technically, all modules are separate web applications in terminology J2EE. However, modules
can be created on the basis of other, basic modules, adding to them additional pages or without any
additions. So, for example, each country is a module, comprising a bulletin board and newspaper,
but connected to a separate, for each country, database. Each such country can have other, original
services, specific for the particular country.

3. Territorial devision
Services like classified ads and newspapers
require the division of an information on the
territorial basis, others, on the contrary, such as
blogosphere, have a global character.
The portal supports the division by countries
and by regions where it is needed, and makes it
possible to create modules aimed for a global
audience, harmoniously combining the two
approaches.
The ability to strictly separate an information by the country is particularly good for the
implementation of a shop module, since the laws of economic activity in different countries are
different. Having a common “core” for the shop and complementing it by specific, to each country
characteristics, you can, having a single code in the “core” shop module with small additions, cover
the whole world with a virtual trading network. In a result, each country will have a separate shop,
with its database, which can be leased to the local operator. In this case, however, everything will
look as if there is only one shop for the entire portal.

4. Portal is multilingual
Support of many languages on a portal
GrandInform doesn't mean a simple translation
of buttons and interface messages into several
languages. It also needs for the publications.
Each country is operating basically just by one
or several languages, while the blogosphere
requires support as many languages as possible.
This contradiction is taken into account during
creating the portal.
Although currently is supported only three languages, the portal is designed for the use of tens or
even hundreds of languages. If, for a blog, you can choose several languages from the entire list, in
order to write an article in the newspaper or place an ad, you can select only those languages,
which are rigidly established as languages for the country of publication.
Moreover being in a single publication, you can write in several languages(in different input
fields), and the reader will only see the version of your publication, which corresponds to the
selected language to him.

5. The portal can be adjusted on-line
If you need to quickly add a new column in the newspaper, an advert category in the bulletin board
or create an additional region, you can do it on-line on special pages, available only to
administrators. You can also set your advertising banners and moderators for rubrics/categories or
for the entire service.
Hard setting up at the software level is required, however, for the installation of a new country, as it
requires the generation of a new database and a new web application module. Fortunately, this
operation does not require much time. Main labor for the installation of a new country are associated
with mechanical translation to other languages names of GUI elements, messages and some text
objects in the database.

6. Message system and notifications
A message system of the portal is very basic at the present. There are implemented folders, to store
sent messages, a simple address book and notifications of new messages to an external e-mail
address of the user.
In addition there is an ability to subscribe for notifications by e-mail on such events as a new
article in the blog of interest, new comment for any article in the blog, and new comment on a
separate article in the newspaper or blog.

7. The blogosphere
Blogosphere of the portal GrandInform is made
alike the newspaper, and it is both a collection
of blogs as well as a set of articles from user's
blogs, divided by themes.
Therefore, access to the user's blogs is done in
different ways. It is either directly through the
list of blogs, accessible using search string (1),
or through links to the blog's articles (2) on the
main page of the blogosphere, or through links
to the "themes" of the blogosphere (3), leading
to a thematic ribbon of articles from all blogs in
the chronological order.
Each blog may contains several dozens of themes defined by the user, where he writes his notes.
If these themes match preset "common" themes of the blogosphere, these notes fall on the front
page of the blogosphere, as shown in the image.

8. The Blog
GrandInform portal supports two types of
blogs: personal and corporate.
Corporate blog differs from the personal
by ability to define other users with write
permission into this blog. Each user can
have two different types of blogs.
Blogs are multilingual.
During creating a blog, user can define up
to three languages for blogging. It means
that articles of the blog can have multiple
text sections, but one set of attributes and
images.
When other users read such multilingual blog, is available only one version of an article's text,
which corresponds to the current language, selected by the reader of the blog.
The possibility to customize the appearance of the blog is limited by several options, which makes reading of
blogs in the "ribbon" more comfortable, without creating a discomfort when moving from one blog to another.
Now, there are variants with vertical or horizontal alignments of topics, with hidden topics, as well as with an
alignment of articles by tiles, distributed over the entire width of the screen, or with an alignment to a line.

9. The newspaper
Newspaper of the portal is
multilingual and supports a large
number of countries and regions.
Home page of the newspaper
includes a lot of information of
various types: headings of regional
press (1), available after selecting a
region, headings for the country (2)
and blogosphere's blocks (3) for the
relevant topics.
Headings can be of two types: for
free publications and "editorials" -
"read only", with the write
permission, given to the editor.
Publications fall into the main page of the newspaper in the chronological order without any editing.
There is also possible to place an advertising banner at the top of the newspaper under the menu bar.
Each country may have a separate banner, or default one, for the whole country.

10. Rubrics of newspaper
Rubrics are accessible from the main
page of the newspaper by a click.
Each rubric can have an ad banner at
the left top corner of the screen. The
banner can be as separate for each
rubric so and the default one, for the
entire newspaper.
In addition, is possible to assign the
owner for rubrics with the right to set
up an ad banner and to configure
subtopics. By this way you can lend
rubrics for rent.
For the ease of reading on a big screens, articles of rubrics are tiled to fill all available space.
You can search for content, have a quick view of the data of the publisher, and press a button to
open a message dialog to the author.

11. The bulletin board
A large number of categories and
regions, good search capabilities and
multilingual - main features of a
bulletin boards on the portal
GrandInform.
Like in the case of newspaper, every
country has its own bulletin board.
And like a newspaper, the bulletin
board can have both regional and
global ad categories. A country may
have as just one or both types of
categories simultaneously.
An important feature of a bulletin board it's the presence of the search criteria sets - separately for
each category. When placing an ad, the user fills in preset criteria(characteristics) of an ad subject.
These criteria will then be used by other users for the search for ads on the board.
The search criteria are adjusted on-line, during the operation of the portal, on special pages available
to administrators.
On a front-page of the board is possible also to set up an system advertising banner, under the menu
bar.

12. Categories of bulletin board
Categories of the bulletin board support, at
the present, the publication of the two types
of ads: with picture and without.
Published ads are placed tiles, distributed
over the entire width of the screen.
User can search for the content, do sorting
and use an advanced search in the form of
expandable area, shown in the picture in
yellow.
Announcements are published on a
temporary basis and are automatically
deleted at the end of the publication.
If a country has several working languages, then submitting an ad, the user has the opportunity to
write several versions of the text - own for each language.
Each category can has a system advertisement banner. It can be separate banner for the category or
the “default" banner for the bulletin board.

13. Publications
Currently, there are several kinds
of publications: ads, notes in blogs
or in the newspaper and comments.
For publications in the newspaper
or blog there is a simple, cross-browser
WYSIWYG editor.
For publications into the bulletin
board is used a plain text input
box, and pictures are available for
the showing through a pop-up
dialogue.
The portal can also successfully work without JavaScript.
In this case, the WYSIWYG editor is not available, but the user can still insert a valid markup in
the text using HTML tags, including the insertion of uploaded images.
Copyright section of an editor window allows you to specify conditions of reprinting own materials
and allows to reprint materials which belongs to others, indicating the necessary details of en
external rightholder, such as a hyperlink, the name, and the type of license.

14. Comments and ratings
User can comment articles of
blogs and newspaper only. Ads
can't be commented.
There is a possibility to
comment the comments.
In the case of a large number of
comments for the article they
are divided by pages.
It is possible to delete the last
comment in the ribbon or cross
out the intermediate. Comments
can be also deleted by
moderator...
The reader can change the rating/rank of articles, showing its attitude. Login is not necessary for
voting. To prevent "cheating" of rating, is taken into account the fact of the vote, although this
mechanism can not be implemented by a reliable way without logging. Ratings are, therefore,
indicative.
Comments, on the contrary, are only possible after login, that would reduce the likelihood of
"trolling".

15. Other features
There is still quite a large number of pages and portal properties that are not described in this
presentation.
It is a user registration system, user profile form, login form, with the password reminder, user
card - to quickly view the user profile (a button to show user card is in each user's publication), a
form for visibility settings of user profile fields, forms for settings of blogs, list of users, with the
ability to perform certain operations on the set of users (mostly for the moderator or
administrator), and others.
Also there is the possibility of feedback: You can contact the site administrator, or write a letter to
moderator for a specific category or rubric. In addition, each country/module can have its own set
of administrators/moderators.
An important feature of the portal is its ability to work without JavaScript while keeping almost
all of his functionality. There are users who prefer, for security reasons, to disable JavaScript.
Portal is comfortable enough for them too.
The portal has the "Site Map" in two versions: the traditional visual - for viewing by the user and
by old search robots, and special, just for search engines via Sitemap protocol, which is necessary
for normal indexing pages.

16. Technical properties and others
The portal has a modular structure. Each module is a separate web application, in the terminology
of J2EE. Because J2EE applications are isolated from each other and require their own
authentication, there is used SSO for user login (Single Sign-On).
The portal was designed taking into account an ability to install it on a pool of servers to increase
performance, by using cluster features of J2EE application servers.
The web interface of the program is done using JSF 2.0, RESTful web services with JSON, AJAX,
YUI JavaScrypt library.
On the server side is used JPA based on Hibernate to access the database (MySql) and JMS for
asynchronous calls.
Currently, the portal uses GlassFish as a J2EE container and installed on a Linux system (Fedora).
All software from third-parties are licensed as Open Source.
Description of the portal in this presentation may not reflect the actual characteristics of the portal at the moment.
Copyright© 2014 Vadims Zemlanojs