NCSL Website Overview

Portal Design: Complete and Direct Access

NCSL's website employs a portal design to give the most direct and complete access possible to all the information we have on the site regarding a particular topic.  The site's organization is simple and features these components:

Navigation bar.  The top navigation bar is consistent throughout the site and provides access to all the other site features.

Home Page.  The home page presents the latest state policy news and highlights current priority information regarding NCSL issues research, meetings and e-learning, federal policy advocacy, and other NCSL services.

Topic Area Portals.  The site has six main portals accessible from the navigation bar.  These portals provide comprehensive access to all information on the site concerning their respective topic areas.

• About Us
• Legislatures and Elections
• Issues and Research
• State-Federal Relations and NCSL Standing Committees
• Legislative Staff Services
• Meetings & Professional Development

Each portal is an interactive resource that provides extensive information directly as portal pages without ever leaving the portal. If not directly presented in the portal pages, then essentially all additional information on the site concerning the portal's topic areas is just one-click away in documents, as described below.

Each portal contains numerous topic areas organized as complete websites.  For example, the NCSL Energy website resides within the Issues and Research portal; the Campaigns and Elections website in the Legislatures and Elections portal; and so forth.  These sites within each portal therefore are referred to as portal sites and they are presented under "tabs" in the portal. 

Documents. The wealth of information and analysis provided by NCSL is published as individual documents on the website. The portal design makes these documents accessible directly from their topic area's portal site. All documents are listed in the portal sites on interactive display pages or "grids" that enable sorting and selection of only the types of documents desired.  There is no need to navigate down through layers within the site. The documents also open from the portal in a new window so that items of interest can be identified, browsed, printed or emailed without ever leaving the portal site. 

Special Services Pages.  In addition to the main portals, the NCSL website contains key pages for special services, including:

• State Legislatures Magazine
• GrassCatcher
• Press Room
• Bookstore

Site Search: The site search provides full-text, keyword search of the information published on NCSL's website.  The search results also feature uncommon, powerful facilities for sorting and further filtering the results according to the topic area, date, and type of document desired.  In addition to the site-wide search, each portal site features full-text search just within its documents, with the same capabilities for sorting and filtering the search results.  See the Site Search Options for help with specifying search terms.

MyNCSL. The capability in MyNCSL to create a personalized portal offers extraordinary access to all the information of particular interest to you.  Portal sites can be added to your personalized portal with the editor in MyNCSL, or they can be added as you browse the site. 

So, if your specific interests include, say, the NCSL Executive Committee, the American Society of Legislative Clerks and Secretaries, all top news from both the Legislatures and Elections portal and the Issues and Research portal, as well as in-depth information regarding education, early childhood development, and elections and campaigns--you can easily create a personal MyNCSL portal that contains all the related portal sites and pages, thus giving you direct access from one page to everything NCSL is publishing on the website for these areas.

To set up MyNCSL: 

• Log in with your personal account. 
• Click on the MyNCSL tab at the top of the site navigation bar.
• Click the Manage MyNCSL checkbox.
• Select a content area from the dropdown box.
• Add the selected area to the top or bottom row of your personal portal using the orange downward pointing arrows.
• Add additional items as desired--up to five areas per row.
• You also can add areas to your personal MyNCSL portal when browsing the site--just click the Add to MyNCSL link.
• Change the order of items their row using the corresponding arrows.
• To delete an area, select it and then click the trashcan icon beneath your areas list box.
• Click Refresh MyNCSL to save your selections.

Video Guides to the NCSL Website

Site Organization and Navigation