# Create Data Portals
**Table of Contents**
* [What is a Portal?](#what-is-a-portal)
* [Components of a Portal](#components-of-a-portal)
* [Portal Uses](#portal-uses)
* [Research Themed Portals](#research-themed-portals)
* [ESS Project Portals](#ess-project-portals)
## What is a Portal?
A portal is a **collection** of private or public datasets on a unique webpage. This webpage also supports additional **text pages** for describing any aspect of the data collection.
Typically, a research project's website won't be maintained beyond the life of the project and all the information on the website that provides context for the data collection is lost. ESS-DIVE portals can provide a means to preserve information regarding the project's objectives, scopes, and organization and couple this with project datasets so it's clear how to use and interpret the data for years to come.
Portals also leverage ESS-DIVE's [**metric feature**](https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/profile), which create statistics describing the project's datasets. Information such as number of datasets, total size of data, data collection time periods, views, downloads, and citations are immediately available from the portal webpage.
## Components of a Portal
Click through the sections below to learn about the four types of tabs in data portals.
{% tabs %}
{% tab title="Settings" %}
## Settings Tab
The first component of portals is the settings tab. This tab is the first page you will see after initially creating a new portal and sets up important infrastructure for the portal.\
\
On this page you can give the portal a title and assign it a unique url; also referred to as a **portal identifier**. You can add a general description of the portal, upload an icon photo or logo for your data, and upload icon photos from any partner organizations that have contributed to the data.These partner icons will appear in the footer banner on every page in a portal, likewise your portal icon will appear in the header banner.
{% hint style="info" %}
Every ESS-DIVE portal URL will follow this format: \
\&#xNAN;***\**/*
{% endhint %}
{% endtab %}
{% tab title="Data" %}
## Data Tab
The data page is the most important component of the ESS-DIVE portal system. This is where your chosen dataset collection is displayed. It looks and performs just like [ESS-DIVE's main data repository ](https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/data)webpage.
{% endtab %}
{% tab title="Metrics" %}
## Metrics Tab
Unlike the first two pages, the metrics page cannot be edited or customized. It is a default feature that provides the following information about the datasets within a portal:
* The total number of publicly-available datasets
* The volume (in bytes) of all publicly-available dataset metadata records and data files
* The most recent date the datasets were last updated (metadata and data are treated separately)
* The file types of all publicly-available data
* The years in which data was collected, regardless of upload date
Click [here](https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/portals/CDIAC/Metrics) to see a complete example of a portal metrics page.
Please contact [ESS-DIVE Support Team](https://ess-dive.lbl.gov/contact/) about any questions or concerns about the metric page
{% endtab %}
{% tab title="Freeform Pages" %}
## Freeform Tabs
Freeform pages are an optional function provided by ESS-DIVE portals. Here, you can add as much supplementary information as needed using markdown. It is highly recommended to create a descriptive **About page** for your data collection.
### Example Freeform Tabs
Below are three examples of ways to take advantage of portal freeform pages to tie unique content together with a data collection. Add as many tabs as needed.
The following examples are from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center's portal, visit [this portal](https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/portals/CDIAC) to explore its contents further.
{% endtab %}
{% endtabs %}
## Portal Uses
There are two primary use cases for collecting datasets into data portals:
1. Datasets related to the same research theme
2. All datasets published by an ESS project
***Note**: Only* [*registered Data Contributors* ](https://docs.ess-dive.lbl.gov/contributing-data/new-contributor-registration)*can create data portals on ESS-DIVE*
{% hint style="info" %}
**Terminology check:** A Data Contributor is someone who has prior approval to upload data on ESS-DIVE and has registered themselves as a Data Contributor with the ESS-DIVE Team.
{% endhint %}
### Research Themed Portals
Data Contributors can use portals to collect public data and create a research-themed webpage. This curated data collection will have data available for direct download, can provide insights about the significance of the collection, and can be shared with colleagues and broad audiences.
### ESS Project Portals
Projects can collect their project-specific datasets into a unique portal and customize the portal's theme and structure according to the needs of that project. Portals enable projects to **preserve their identity** on ESS-DIVE as well as their data.
A project portal can use freeform pages to include information about:
* The project, funding program, and project partners
* Purpose of the project data
* Significant paper citations
* Authors bios
For projects, portals can also be used to **report on performance** by leveraging the [metric feature](#metrics) (click [here](https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/portals/CDIAC/Metrics) to see an example of portal metrics). Important statistics about the project's data are tracked on the metrics page including total data publications, number of data views and downloads, and the time span of data collection across the project.
{% hint style="warning" %}
Currently, project-based portals can only be linked to an individual's ESS-DIVE account. The current infrastructure does not support project-based or group accounts.
**However, once created, a portal can be shared with project team members to grant view, edit or manage access.** See [Share Portals](https://docs.ess-dive.lbl.gov/manage-data/share-data-permissions/share-portals) and [Project Teams](https://docs.ess-dive.lbl.gov/manage-data/manage-project-data/project-teams) for more information.
{% endhint %}
## [Explore Public Data Portals](https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/portals)
All public data portals are accessible via ESS-DIVE's Portal page.
