Dream Portal is a portal system designed to function with SMF (Simple Machines Forum).

As the goal of any portal system, which is to allow you to easily manage your site and webpages, Dream Portal offers many tools to help streamline this using AJAX, Javascript, jQuery, and other recent technologies. Dream Portal allows you to take advantage of placing Modules (or blocks of information) on different actions and non-actions of your SMF forum and is easily configurable, using a simple drag-and-drop placing method for the different modules that provides a WYSIWYG environment. Dream Portal allows a user to display all the desired information with very little effort.

Users can also create and save multiple layouts by name, allowing use of different layouts for different membergroups, users, or simply the ability to change between several different configurations at will. Dream Pages offers the ability to create your own PHP, HTML, or BBC pages that link directly into SMF. Dream Menu offers the ability to create, manage, and order your Menu Item buttons within SMF.

In short, Dream Portal allows you the ability to easily customize your SMF forum and site with many different possibilities using streamlined web technologies that make customization a breeze.

Dream Portal started off as a simple static SSI-based portal named Maple Portal that was created by ccbtimewiz for a friend.

As the site grew, the team behind the forums took up new members and one of them happened to be tyty1234 who then decided to look into Maple Portal and make it dynamic. After falling in love with it, he came into agreement with ccbtimewiz to use it as foundation for a brand new portal for SMF that would integrate easily with SMF 2.0 and its brand new theme, Curve.

The task was daunting as there were many other portals already in existence that were gearing up for SMF 2.0 as well so they decided to form a team that would help create and manage the project to make it stable. The need to give the portal an appropriate identity arose, one that aligned with its objective and goals, so after a general consensus the portal was renamed to "Dream Portal", since it was a dream that everyone shared to have a user-friendly, simple and elegant portal for SMF that had the user's interests at heart. Our goal became to design a portal with a simple interface for dragging and dropping modules with a seamless "hook" system for easy layout and flexibility that would make customizing easy for our users.

That is how we became what we are today, by taking small steps everyday towards realizing our Dream we have grown and the team stays true to the vision of creating the ultimate, user-friendliest portal for SMF.

While Dream Portal is still young, and an ever-growing Portal, it's Long-Term goals and plans for the future are not yet, fully, established, however, here is what the future holds that we can guarantee:

Dream Portal will cater more to its original view of the Dream at which it began... Personalization and Customization. Member Layouts will be introduced that will allow each user the ability to create their own personal layout for the Home Page, or whatever page they want on that site, permission-based ofcourse. A wider spectrum of settings (for both Advanced and Beginners). Module Parameters will be expanded upon, and ofcourse, more flexibility and a better, overall, performance. Dream Portal will continue to listen and shape itself into what the End-User wants and needs from a Portal in the most professional way possible.

You should use whatever Portal that you feel comfortable with! Such free projects are limited to the time we have as a team to develop, support, and contribute to Dream Portal. As end-users ourselves, we know what we want, but can have a hard time expressing it. Basically, a site that speaks for itself, with an impact and flexibility of control that blows us away. A simple, user-friendly, solution for the beginner, yet powerful enough with feature-rich content and options for advanced users. A portal that speaks for itself, like your website should! Dream Portal raises the bar for all portals to help you get the best experience possible from a Portal. And to top it all off... with a cherry, Dream Portal has just begun! That's right we are just getting warmed up. There is a bright future ahead for Dream Portal. ENJOY!

Note: No animals were harmed during the making of Dream Portal!