Where I work the department has it's own intranet site (not sharepoint!) that is separate from the main company's. The main page is a jumble of over 150 different links grouped into about 20 categories. It's a real mess of a page.
What I want to do is turn this page into a sitemap. I'll put all the links into a database that the sitemap draws from. This part is almost done already. Then I want to create a new home page that uses web parts and this sitemap to create a MyYahoo or iGoogle -like experience.
The idea is to create a number of controls that can be included on the page at the discretion of each user, many of them using the sitemap as a datasource for their content. I'll have controls so users can add one whole group from the sitemap, individual links, or even group together a set of links under a common heading (and include multiple customized instances of this control, as well). We also have some internal RSS feeds, so I want a control to be able to add an rss feed to the page.
When all this is up it will enable us to build new functionality in terms of webpart widgets that can be used, rather than necessitating a new page for every little feature we need. I also want to be able to create templates, so that users with similar job functions can start out with pages that will include most of what they'll need as a base, rather than every user needing to start from scratch. It's all rather ambitious.
However, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around webparts. It should be really simple, but I'm just not seeing how it all fits together. Can someone point me to a good guide or tutorial? The page one google results for variations on webpart tutorial just haven't helped me.