CDNs, Portals, Platforms and Microsites are terms that are often tossed around interchangeably, so we want to define them and provide simple explanations. They are four different things!
CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is the way that the content is moved around the internet and should be transparent to the user. CDNs are very important, even if the end user doesn’t know it exists. If your technology company does not understand them, that’s a red flag.
Portals are more or less Web Portals. This is the place where you view the information from a stream. Portals come in a million different flavors and price points, depending on the features that you want.
Platforms are what Web Portals are built on. They can be blank canvases based on a programming language, or they can be premade websites where you simply drop in content. They’re important because they help determine what kind of features and how much traffic your event can handle.
Then there are Microsites. These are mini-websites are often created for a special purpose such as an online event, and they’re usually built into a larger website.
A Microsite can contain the Web Portal, which is built on a Platform, which gets the streaming content from a CDN. We hope this simple explanation helps to clarify these four terms!
