A framework for creating modular web pages. The framework enables the development of modular, customized, and personalized web applications including web portals and web pages. The framework includes an extensible part base class and an extensible zone base class. Part controls that derive from the part base class include web part controls, editor part controls, and catalog part controls. Zone controls, editor zone controls, and catalog zone controls derive from the zone base class. Each zone control contains one or more part controls and each zone is responsible for rendering part controls within each respective zone. Web part controls can communicate with other web part controls. Web part controls can be edited, removed, or added to a zone control. The functionality of part controls can vary widely among the part controls in a particular zone and across different zones.