26. The system of claim 25 , wherein a property editor window is used to change a look and feel of the portal component.
25. A system for generating a user-configured portal, comprising: a server including one or more processors, said server configured to automatically synchronize data; a plurality of portal designer tools deployed in a first development environment capable of simultaneously obtaining portal configuration information; an administration tool deployed in a second development environment capable of constructing a portal for a particular user or group of users; wherein each one of the portal designer tools includes a graphical user interface that obtains the portal configuration information by dragging and dropping a portal component from a palette to a display within the graphical user interface, and wherein the portal component includes one of a portlet, page and book; wherein the graphical user interface includes a design view, a source view and a hierarchical view, and wherein the design view is a display that gives a graphical indication of the portal components in the portal, the source view is a display of the portal description and the hierarchical view provides a graphical indication of all the portal components arranged in a hierarchy; wherein the administration tool aggregates the portal configuration information received from the plurality of portal designer tools located in the first development environment to construct the portal for the particular user or group of users; whereupon when the server detects a modification of the portal description by any of the design tools by detecting at least one of a drag and drop of a new portal component from the palette into the display within the graphical user interface, and editing properties of the selected portal component, the server automatically synchronizes the portal description, design view, source view and hierarchical view across the portal designer tool and the administration tool, via the network, to reflect the modification of the portal description, and wherein upon detecting the modification of the portal description, the design view, source view and hierarchical view are updated to reflect the modification.